Women in Agriculture

Lesson 1 : Status of Women in Agriculture- An introduction

Participation Profile of Rural Women

• Independent participation is observed only in homestead activities
• Equal share of participation along with men predominantly prevails in farming and live stock management activities.
• Extensive joint participation with women exists in majority of the farming activities.

Decision Making Profile of Rural Women

• The finance related decisions by women are extremely dim in all land holding categories
• Women’s decision making capabilities in farm related areas are extremely weak though an excessively high percentage of joint decisions with men could be observed.
• Though women are the active participants in livestock management and homestead activities, they are not the independent decision makers for majority of the decisions.

The studies on role of women in agriculture highlighted on participation of women in ecologically friendly production, processing and commercialization system in agriculture along with use and management of natural resources. Clear cut visibility existed with reference to farming as family enterprise, which characterized the link between economic activities and the partnership between woman and man in agriculture. The partnership influences the decision making process, the organization of family labour, the choice of activities and the management of family resources.

The participation pattern of women indicated that under diversified ecological conditions, the farming is diversified among different land holders. While the priority of large- scale farm families is to produce for commercial purpose and home consumption the trend is reverse for marginalized and small scale farm families. In landless families the women provide human resource farm activities for economic stability. In small and holding families the women supply labour input while in large sized households the women provide managerial input in agriculture.

The overall innovativeness shown by farm women deserves special recognition as they have the potentiality to adopt to new conditions in farming system. This means that they have the ability to improve.