Women’s Contribution to Agriculture Economy not Captured in National Statistics : Daily Current Affairs

Relevance: GS-3: Indian Economy and issues relating to planning, mobilization, of resources, growth, development and employment Inclusive growth and issues arising from it; Agricultural produce and issues and related constraints.

Key Phrases: Women vulnerability Triplet, Economic Survey 2017-18, National Policy for Farmers (2007), National Policy for Farmers (2007), Gender Based Budgeting.

Why in News ?

Recently, a panel discussion was held on the ‘Impact of Climate Change on Agricultural Livelihoods of Women’.
Panel member discussed on Women’s work and their contribution to the agriculture economy, poor data availability of women contribution in agriculture economy.

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.
Regardless of these variations, women are actively involved in various agricultural and allied activities.
As per Census 2011, out of total female main workers, 55 per cent were agricultural labourers and 24 per cent were cultivators.
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.
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.

What are the key highlights of the panel discussion?

Around 60 percent of women are employed in agriculture. However, the full scale contributions are often not captured in the national statistics.
Women vulnerability Triplet – `Livelihood, Climate and Agriculture ` are closely linked to each other.
Around 76 percent of people get their nutrients from plants, and 80 percent of food is produced by women. Still women are not seen as cultivators.
Women play different roles, and they are viewed by the larger society as community management and reproductive assets. This exacerbates their vulnerability to the impacts of climate change.
In case of crop failure, fuel shortage, the whole burden falls on the women of the households to fetch fodder, fuelwood, etc. Lack of technology makes their work more difficult.
Around 65-70 per cent of the work is done by women. There is a significant issue at the data based policy making and there is a need to enable a gender centric policy that improves women's situation.

What are the key measures suggested by the panel members?

Government will have to find a mechanism to move the population from agriculture to other professions and entrepreneurship in the local ecosystem and this is something it is overlooking in the present times.
Need a lot of expertise who understand hydrology, biodiversity. There are several ‘Adivasi’ women that have a lot of indigenous knowledge and there is a need to somehow recognize this knowledge and put it to better use.
Research agendas should be created which include women’s opinions on what burdens them, and work accordingly on making these agendas convenient, adding: “An ecosystem needs to be created in which women have the power to make decisions and this needs to ramp up and accelerate now.”

Do you know what the Feminisation of Agriculture is?

Economic Survey 2017-18 says that with growing rural to urban migration by men, there is ‘feminisation’ of the agriculture sector, with an 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.

What are the key suggestions given by the Economic Survey?

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.

What are the key challenges faced by women farmers?

Lack of property rights related to agriculture land ownership.
Lack of access to financial credit
Lack of access to key resources, information and Agriculture extension facilities.
Triple Burden of Life: Field work, Kitchen maintenance and Child Rearing

What are the steps taken by the government?

Mahila Kisan Sashaktikaran Pariyojana: It aims to empower women by enhancing their participation in agriculture and to create sustainable livelihood opportunities for them.
National Policy for Farmers (2007) which aims for dedicated women centric government efforts.
Gender Based Budgeting: At least 30% of the budget allocation has been earmarked for women beneficiaries in all ongoing schemes/programmes and development activities.
Government has increased its focus on women self-help groups (SHG) to connect them to micro-credit through capacity building activities.
Recognizing the critical role of women in agriculture, the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare has declared 15th October of every year as Women Farmer’s Day.

Conclusion:

The discussion also threw light on the significant gender gap prevailing amongst agricultural casual workers.
It also noted that women’s wages are at least 30 per cent lower than the male. The panel members further addressed the issue of women bearing the brunt of the impact of Covid as well as climate change.

Source: The Hindu BL

Mains Question:

Q. Feminisation in Agriculture is the combined outcome of pushed migration, distressed rural economy and feminized poverty. Examine.( 10 marks).