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The woman is the backbone of Agricultural workforce but worldwide her hard work has mostly been unpaid. She does the most tedious and back breaking tasks in agriculture, animal husbandry and homes. The research efforts at ICAR institutes are trying to relieve her of the drudgery by providing time and labour saving tools.
Rural women play a crucial role in agricultural development in India. They are active in crop production, live stock production, horticulture, post harvest operation, agro/social forestry, fishing etc. Farm women play an important role in managing different kinds of farm and home affairs. More recently it has been recognized by the social scientists, policy makers, administrators and politicians that women contribute significantly in agricultural development and its allied activities. She also performs several farming practices with her male counterpart and sometimes alone. This is the fact the women also often not considered as farmer who also need training support, capacity building with regard to information and technology, extension advice and so on.
The National Research Centre for women in Agriculture has been established to identify gender issues and test appropriateness of available farm technologies/ programmes/ policies with women perspective for promoting gender main streaming in research and extension for empowerment of farm women and policy makers to respond to the needs of farm women.
There is an urgent need to introduce appropriate technology for women farmers and to see that technological needs are satisfied. The participation of women farmers in Research & Technology, development process to provide resources needed for their family and household development are to be seen as first priority by all developmental agencies particularly the extension services agency. In order to develop women oriented technologies the women specific jobs and their perspectives have to be identified.
It’s for the planners, development administrators & scientists to find out ways and means for incorporating the concerned variables into the technology generation process. Following steps must be taken to develop technologies for farm women:-
- Improving farm women productivity/work efficiency.
- Increasing their income generating capabilities.
- Increasing their employment opportunities.
- Reducing the drudgery in performing certain farm operations.
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