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Agriculture is the largest sector in the Indian economy accounting for 73 percent of the total labour force in the country. Women are the invisible backbone of Indian agriculture. Nearly 79 percent of the total female workforce is involved in agriculture. Despite women’s diverse productive and reproductive roles in rural agrarian and non-farm activities. Their participation as a percentage of the rural workforce although more than double urban rates is only 36 percent compared to male participation which stands at 64 percent. The extent of female work participation varies across regions and even within the same village depending on caste and class hierarchies and norms of social mobility and seclusion. For example upper caste women seldom go out to work in the fields though they may help with task that can be done in the family compound or around the homestead. In contrast it is generally acknowledged that woman from poor peasants households spend between 12 to 16 hours a day on work. Conceptual biases arise when apart from wage work or agricultural work other tasks performed by rural woman are not seen as economic a contribution that is women’s work is not valued.
The rate of growth of employment in the agricultural sector is much slower compared to the organized sector, particularly for women. Women’s employment in the agricultural sector is growing at an annual rate of 2.3 percent as proposed to a 3.66 percent growth rate in the organized sector. Another factor affecting female labour to that of male was around 70 percent in the 1980s but declined substantially to about 60% in 1990. The low wages paid to woman can not be linked with any perceived inefficiency on their part.
Gender analysis enables us to explore and highlight the underlying inequalities in the relationship between women and men. In the context of agriculture, gender analysis enables us to identify the different activities that men and women do. On one hand, gender analysis can help ensure the provision of appropriate agricultural services that are needed by both men and women farmers.
Women in our country hold the most prestigious name in agriculture and still the situation is not good. According to the extension department, the ministry, the agricultural Universities, the ICAR, the research centers, the entire agricultural bureaucracy is gender sensitive. Men are supposed to be serving the farming community but the entire agricultural establishment does little for women because they are not aware of women’s and their problems. One of the reasons for this is that historically the academic, research and other stream of agriculture has been headed by men and traditional perception of kisan is male. Women is struggling to find her place in farming because in English “Farmer” and in Hindi “Kisan” denote the male gender in people’s perception. If one says fanner or kisan, it only denotes male not women.
Rural Women form the most important productive work force in the economy of majority of the developing nations including India. Agriculture the single largest production endeavour in India, contributing 25% of QDP, is increasingly becoming a activity. Agriculture sector employs 4/5th of all economically active women in die country. 48% of India’s sel&employed farmers are women. There are 75 million women engaged in dairying as against 15 million men and 20 million in animal husbandry as compared to 1.5 million men.
Beyond the conventional market-oriented narrower definition of ‘productive workers’, almost all women in rural India today can be considered as ‘farmers’ in some sense, working as agricultural labour, unpaid workers in the family farm enterprise, or combination of the two. Moreover, several farm activities traditionally carried out by men are also being undertaken by women as men are pulled away into higher paying employment. Thus, Rural India is witnessing a process which could be described as Feminization of Agriculture.
More than simply supplying labour, women possess detailed knowledge of agriculture and use of plant and plant product for food, medicine and animal feed. Women today are central to the selection, breeding, cultivation, preparation & harvest of food crops. Apart from their pivotal role in cultivation of staple crops, they are primarily responsible for the production of secondary crops such as pulses and vegetables which are often the only source of nutrition available to their families. Women farmers also often possess unique knowledge about fish farming and handle most of the work associated with it
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