As women take on grater responsibility for agricultural production either on their own farm (or household for) or as wage workers, they face different constraints and obstacles and have different needs. Development policies in the past have assumed that farmer and the principal breadwinners are men. Evidence that women are also farmers and also principal bread winners calls for the need to address these gender constraints. Epidemics, violent conflict, and civil war contribute to an increasing number of female headed household.
- Access to productive resources Development policy should address the persistent problem of improving women’s access to productive resources: land, credit, and labour. Women face constraints as effective producers in the rural economy. As more women become the principal supporters of their households, these constraints not only prejudice women’s physical and emotional health they also have impact on household welfare.
Privatization and commercialization of community landed resources such as communal land, forests, and water sources are also prejudicial to subsistence agriculture and smallholder households. Women who are unable to leave rural areas are particularly influenced by loss of community natural resources.
- Agricultural support services Women do not have the same access to agricultural services and resources as men. Policies are needed to ensure that women participate in and benefit from the dissemination of technology and knowledge needed for commercial agricultural and food production.
- Delivery of health and education services to rural areas Persistent and increasing rural poverty has been exacerbated by neo-liberal polities that cut state support for health and education. Education and health policies should address the needs of women and children in rural areas who often are not as mobile and educated as men and who often lack basic documentation to be eligible for these services. Related to health grater regulation on the use and handling of chemical inputs, particularly in the non traditional agricultural export industry is needed to protect women’s and men’s health. Also needed is greater education and awareness among agricultural worker and producers about exposure to chemical.
- Reduction of women’s domestic work load As women take in more responsibility for agricultural production policy makers should expose how to provide services and innovations that reduce the time and work involved in domestic tasks. Development policy and programme should also address the rigid gender division of labour. Greater awareness of women’s of domestic and reproductive workload and their increasing participation in market economy activities is a first step in creating a climate for modifying gender roles.
- Gender disaggregated data collection Gender disaggregated data is surely needed to understand intra household labour and resource allocation and control. As already pointed out, lack of how men and women allocate labour and resources within the household has made it difficult to determine women’s overall participation in agricultural production. Data is needed not only on women’s and men’s productive labour, but also on the levels of labour invested in the reproduction of the household and rural labour force. Decisions made within the household determine who (women, men, female children, and male children) benefits from the allocation decisions.
Indeed, cultures are not static, not something given for all time. The sources of change in a culture are varied, including intercultural discussion and communications, where information technology has major role to play. The cultural ceiling that effectively prohibit women from being recognized as economic contributors needs to be overcome in order to increase the potential of human society, including women’s agency and productivity.
Gender equality is seen only as a goal, a social desirability to which many people think they should seem to agree. Certainly, that is step forward to reduce discrimination. This social desirability, however, needs to be translated into social practice. Some important strategies towards achieving this may include: (1) studies on innovations, based on women’s aspirations and equality of access to livelihood opportunities with their independent, unmediated control and/or ownership of land, assets and related factors of production; (2) building an enabling environment for strengthening individual capabilities of rural women to mange land, agricultural produce and assets; (3) enhancing policy understanding on how rural women’s individual and collective voices suggest new and modified agricultural strategies.
Technological empowerment of women in agriculture (a current program in India) has to be backed up with unmediated asset ownership of women; a process to enhance agricultural management skills and knowledge; a wide spread gender sensitization in rural areas through information and communication technologies, which helps to develop a social understanding of women as producers, farmers and economic contributors. In other words, women’s unmediated control and ownership of land, new technologies, and irrigation and management skills give them and their households a livelihood with dignity. These if done hand in hand, are stronger measures in overcoming poverty.
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Participants