Role of women in agriculture and its allied fields

Women play a significant and crucial role in agricultural development and allied fields. The nature and extent of women's involvement in agriculture varies greatly from region to region. But regardless of these variations, women are actively involved in various agricultural activities.

As per Census 2011, out of total female main workers, 55 per cent were agricultural labourers and 24 per cent were cultivators. However, only 12.8 per cent of the operational holdings were owned by women, which reflect the gender disparity in ownership of landholdings in agriculture. Moreover, there is concentration of operational holdings (25.7 per cent) by women in the marginal and small holdings categories.

Worker Population Ratio (WPR) of women (24 %) is lower  as against men (54.4 % ) in the country. The workforce participation rate for rural females is higher at 30.5 percent against urban women participation rate of 20.20 percent (MoSPI, 2022-23). 

As per the Annual Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) Report 2022-23, agriculture had the highest estimated percentage distribution of female workers, ie. 64.3 %, with 76.2 % in rural areas and 11.7 % in urban areas.        

Feminisation of Agriculture

With growing rural to urban migration by men, there is ‘feminisation’ of agriculture sector, with increasing number of women in multiple roles as cultivators, entrepreneurs, and labourers. Globally, there is empirical evidence that women have a decisive role in ensuring food security and preserving local agro-biodiversity. Rural women are responsible for the integrated management and use of diverse natural resources to meet the daily household needs. This requires that women farmers should have enhanced access to resources like land, water, credit, technology and training which warrants critical analysis in the context of India. In addition, the entitlements of women farmers will be the key to improve agriculture productivity. The differential access of women to resources like land, credit, water, seeds and markets needs to be addressed.

With women predominant at all levels-production, pre-harvest, post-harvest processing, packaging, marketing – of the agricultural value chain, to increase productivity in agriculture, it is imperative to adopt gender specific interventions. An ‘inclusive transformative agricultural policy’ should aim at gender-specific intervention to raise productivity of small farm holdings, integrate women as active agents in rural transformation, and engage men and women in extension services with gender expertise.

Rural women perform numerous labour intensive jobs such as weeding, hoeing, grass cutting, picking, cotton stick collection, separation of seeds from fibre, keeping of livestock and its other associated activities like milking, milk processing, preparation of ghee, etc. Details of activities taken up by women in Agriculture and its allied activities are as follows.

Agriculture

Mainly rural women are engaged in agricultural activities in three different ways depending on the socio-economic status of their family and regional factors. They work as:

• Paid Labourers.
• Cultivator doing labour on their own land.
• Managers of certain aspects of agricultural production by way of labour supervision and the participation in post harvest operations.

The types of agricultural activities taken up by women include the following :

• Sowing
• Nursery management
• Transplanting
• Weeding
• Irrigation
• Fertilizer application
• Plant protection
• Harvesting, winnowing, storing etc.

Livestock

Livestock is the primary livelihood activity used to meet household food needs as well as supplement farm incomes. It is a common practice in the rural areas to give an animal as part of a women's dowry. Studies have revealed rural women earn extra income from the sale of milk and animals. Mostly women are engaged in cattle management activities such as

• Cleaning of animal and sheds
• Watering of cattle
• Milking the animals
• Fodder collection
• Preparing dung cakes
• Collection farm yard manure

Except grazing, all other livestock management activities are predominantly performed by women. Men, however, share the responsibility of taking care of sick animals. It is evident that the women are playing a dominant role in the livestock production and management activities.

Poultry

Poultry farming is one of the major sources of rural economy. The rate of women participation in poultry farming at household level is central in poultry industry.

Wage rates

The Average wage earnings of women in Agriculture was Rs. 263 /day against Rs 350 for men. 

Source : TNAU Agritech portal

Related resources

• Annual Report, Periodic Labour Force Survey