Women in Agriculture

Lesson 28 : Gender Issues

Various gender Issues

1. Feminization of agriculture
   • The role of women is increasing in agriculture
   • Female to male farmers percentage rouse from 14 to 32
   • Significantly high and growing population of women headed population
   • Active role in many operations
   • Shifting of certain roles originally being played by men, to women


2. Overburden of work

   Women, when compared to men are working for

   • more numbers of hours
   • more laborious work
   • more number of days


3. Constraints in accessing of resources
   • Lack of access to land
   • Lack of access to training
   • Lack of marketing infrastructure and other facilities


4. Facilities and support services
   • Female labour lack drinking water, sanitation and other facilities at their work place
   • Support services are as inadequate to take of children especially younger children


5. Impact of technology
   • Work load of women increased from the time ~een revolution
   • Many of the activities done by men were mechanized, but women operations remained manual increasing drudgery and fatigue
   • Women friendly and specially tailored technologies are rarely available
   • Though they are designed for women, men take over jobs side tracking women.


6. Development bias
   • Women are mostly treated as consumers of social services rather than producers
   • Due to limited control over productive roles, women suffer from statistical paradah


7. Access to land
   • Lack of owner ship, leading to ..
   • Lack of access to credit, leading to ..
   • Insecure tenancy, leading to ..
   • Limited or smaller and less productive plots, leading to
   • Lack of production planning leading to..


8. Access to credit
   • Low access to institutional credit due to untitled ownership
   • Discrimination and hesitation shown by rural credit institutions on the risk bearing role of women


9. Access to market
   • Women engaged in farm activities are usually producing smaller quantities, due to which they are unable to utilize market boards and cooperatives
   • Local or middle men marketing is limiting their barging power.


10. Access to extension activities
    • Due to gender inequality women are rarely involved in extension demonstrations and other activities, thus depriving from updated technology.
    • Inadequate access to TV programmes due to routine domestic activities


11. Women Education
    • Being mostly illiterates, unable to utilize written information
    • Vocational education in exclusively for women as yet at preliminary stage.


12. Training and capacity building
    • Due to low skill efficiency women are many a times are thrown into unorganized sector, thus resulting in low payment of wages
    • Much attention is not given earlier to conduct skill training for the exclusive operation attended by women