Women in Agriculture

Lesson 48 :National Policy for Women in Agriculture

Objectives

The National Commission for Women has prepared National Policy for Women in the agricultural sector with the following; objectives:

• Ensuring women’s access to and control over resources, namely land including land rights, water, pasture/forest/biodiversity resources including seed, fodder, fuel and raw materials for artisan products, to address their labour and livelihood issues.
• Recognizing single women such as widowed, abandoned , separated, unmarried women in women-headed rural households as well as other women in all rural households as farmers/agricultural workers and giving them equal wages for equal work as well as equal access to all benefits that may accrue to farmers/agricultural workers.
• Safeguarding the food security of the country by ensuring minimum support prices and other incentives for primary producers and at the same time, by providing sufficient foodgrains at affordable prices for all, so that malnutrition particularly among women and children may be eliminated.
  • Focusing on problems faced by women working in various sub-sectors in the agriculture sector (such as gathering of forest products, livestock keeping, fisheries, rural artisan work etc.) and to prepare policy initiatives to promote and encourage such activities.
  • Protecting , promoting and upgrading through appropriate training programmes traditional knowledge in agriculture, livestock breeding, fisheries, growing of medicinal plants etc. possessed by women.
  • Developing woman-sensitive agri-practices and technology in research and extension for better convergence and dovetailing of women-oriented schemes and programmes.
  • To ensure adequate and equal availability of services like irrigation, credit, insurance, technology, extension, information, training and markets for women in agriculture sector.
  • To encourage primary producers in the agricultural sector to produce and market seeds, forest products, dairy products, livestock etc.
  • To ensure that displacement of women and children or any loss of women’s livelihood for reasons of development does not take place without the explicit consent of concerned women as well as men, and without acceptable and viable alternative livelihood being provided for them.
  • To see that all laws such as the Recognition of Forest Rights Act, 2007, the Food Safety Act and the Bio-diversity Act etc. are formulated/ amended and implemented in a way that recognizes the interests of women primary producers.