WOMEN IN AGRICULTURE: MULTIFACETED ROLES AND TASKS, WORK STRESS FACTORS, NUTRITIONAL AND RURAL LIFE STANDARDS

1. Title: Introductory Agriculture
WOMEN IN AGRICULTURE: MULTIFACETED
ROLES AND TASKS,
WORK STRESS FACTORS, NUTRITIONAL AND
RURAL LIFE STANDARDS
Prof. Shivaji R. Suryavanshi
Asst. Professor of Agronomy,
Dr. D.Y. Patil College of Agriculture,
Talsande.

2. • Gender Concept :
• Gender refers to the social differences and relations
between men and women which are learned, vary widely
among societies & cultures, and changes over time.
• Gender refers to the roles and responsibilities of men and
women that are created in our families, our societies and
our cultures.
• The concept of gender also includes the expectations held
about the characteristics, aptitudes and likely behaviours of
both women and men (feminity and masculinity).
• Whereas Sex describes the biological differences
between men and women, which are universal and
determined at birth.
• The term gender does not replace the term sex.
• The term gender is used to analyze the roles,
responsibilities, constraints, opportunities and needs of
women and men in all areas and in any given social context.

3. MULTIFACETED ROLES AND TASKS,
WORK STRESS FACTORS,

4. NUTRITIONAL AND RURAL LIFE STANDARDS

5. • Gender equality defined in terms of an equal
distribution of economic power, must be understood
as a distribution of influence, power and
opportunities based on parity.
• Gender equity means fairness of treatment for
women and men, according to their respective needs.
• This may include equal treatment or treatment that is
different but which is considered equivalent in terms
of rights, benefits, obligations and opportunities.
• Gender Equity is the process of being fair to men and
women. To ensure fairness, measures must often be
put in place to compensate for the historical and
social disadvantages that prevent women and men
from operating on a level playing field. Equity is a
means, while Equality and equitable outcomes are

6. • Women comprise about 50 % of the country’s
population.
• But their participation in economic activity is only 34 %.
• In India women have remained a neglected section of
work force. They are not considered on par with men.
• In advanced countries of the world there is a
phenomenal increase in the number of self-employed
women in agriculture.
• In US women own 25 % of all business including
agriculture.
• In Canada 1/3, France 1/5, and
• In India self employed women account only for 5.2 %.

7. • The majority of the rural women in India,
as well as in other developing countries,
actively participate in farm related
operations, besides fulfilling their
responsibilities as home makers. The
extent of their participation, however,
varies depending on the socio-economic
and cultural background of the area.
• In all societies, men and women are
assigned tasks, activities and
responsibilities that are socially
determined rather than natural and
immutable.

8. • The gender division of labour varies from one
society and culture to another and within
each culture, it also changes with external
circumstances and over time.
• For the sake of understanding we will see the
roles of women in transplanting of paddy in
Konkan and high rainfall areas.
• However in the desert of Rajasthan, in the
hot sun the women are seen carrying the
pots to fetch the water.
• In the mountain or hilly areas like Ladakh,
women’s are also actively engaged in the
cultivation of crops.

9. • In all above regions no men are seen to
be engaged / or if seen exceptionally
rare cases in performing paddy
transplanting in konkan, fetching water
for domestic purpose or cultivating
crops in mountains areas like Ladakh.
• Nearly 79 per cent of the total female
work force in engaged in agriculture
compared to only 69 per cent of the
male workforce.

10. • However, 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 (Maratha,
Brahmins, Rajputs, Patels, Nairs and Reddys)
will seldom go out to work in the fields,
though they may help with tasks that can be
done in the family compound (winnowing,
seed selection) or around the homestead
(looking after kitchen gardens).

11. • In contrast, it is generally acknowledged that
women from poor peasant households spend
between 12 to 16 hours a day on work (both
visible and invisible tasks), though this is
hardly accounted for in national statistics.
• In advanced countries of the world there is
phenomenal increase in number of self-
employed women in agriculture.
• In US women own 25 % of all business
including agriculture. In Canada 33 % (1/3),
France 20 % (1/5) and in India self employed
women account only 5.2 %.

12. • In India, the rate of growth of employment in the
agricultural sector is much slower compared to
organized sector, particularly for women. The
2001 census show that women’s employment in
the agricultural sector is growing at an annual
rate of 2.3 per cent as opposed to 3.66 per cent
growth rate in the organized sector.

13. • However, most of this growth is in female casual
labour, which is significantly higher than that of
male casual labour. Not only have men found
easier to avail of opportunities in non-farm
employment (e.g. in transport and
communication sectors), the lack of female
mobility between sectors (farm / non-farm)
renders them more vulnerable to policy changes.
Various factors like socio-cultural barriers, lack of
adequate skills, gender biases in hiring etc. are
responsible for this lack of mobility. On the other
hand, the higher percentage of female
agricultural labourers has ironically made
women’s agricultural work more ‘visible’.

14. • Although there is some inter-regional
variation in the incidence of female
agricultural labour (depending on different
parameters and definitions), it is clear that the
shift towards wage-work co-relates with the
period of Green Revolution and the advent of
high yielding cash crops dependent on
intensive applications of water, fertilizers and
pesticides. More than 50 per cent of the
growth in female agricultural labourers is due
to the increase in the number of non-
scheduled castes and tribes agricultural
labourers, mostly landless.

15. • Another factor affecting female labour is the unequal
wage rates. The ratio of agricultural wage rate of
female labour to that of male was around 60 per cent
in the 1990s.
• Regional and seasonal variations not withstanding
gender discriminating in wage rates often intersects
with other forms of exclusion or vulnerability, such as
caste, age, disability, status (single, deserted, widow),
which further weakens women’s ability to negotiate
equal wages.
• Wage differentials can be both direct (different wages
for the same work, e.g. paddy harvesting) or indirect
(different wages for the different tasks which women
and men do ; e.g. weeding seen as women’s work and
field bunding as male work).

16. • The low wages paid to women cannot be linked with any
perceived in efficiency on their part. In fact, test conducted by
the PAU, Ludhiana at the Govt. Potato seed farm found that
women were four times as efficient as men. The picking rate
per labourer per minute was 1.6 for men and 5.2 for women.
• Sometimes unequal wage rates are so deeply entrenched that
any attempt to challenge them is met with resistance, often
violent, from landowners.
• In other cases, women are not paid cash but in kind; a portion
of the crop they harvest.
• But women are not necessarily the ones who undersell their
labour-male family members often act as go betweens and
are sometimes forced to agree to lower rates either because
of social compulsions (low caste) or economic factors (in debt,
sometimes to the same landowner.)

17. • Pearson (1979) classified the role of farm women
into the following four categories. These are ..
• Independent producers, who manage the farms
largely by themselves;
• Agricultural partners, who share most aspects of
work, responsibilities and decision making with
their husbands;
• Agricultural helpers, who only participate in farm
work at busy times when extra help is needed;
and
• Farm home markers, who contribute to the farm
production indirectly by preparing meals and
attending those working in the fields.

18. • The gender division of labour
(Nature of women’s role) :
• According the Marxist thought, in primitive or
pre-class society the first division of labour was
between men and women for the propagation of
children- a “pure and simple outgrowth of
nature”. Men provided the means of subsistence
while women were concerned with the
production and reproduction of human life.

19. • Productive Work : It involves the production of good
and services of consumption and/or trade. It is this
work, which is mainly recognized and valued as work
by individuals and societies, and which is most
commonly included in national economic statistics.
Although both women and men are involved in
production activities that generated income,
women’s work is usually undervalued or underpaid
compared to that done by men. For example,
farmers are nearly always referred to as men, despite
rural women’s significant contribution to agricultural
production of the female labour force in India, more
than 94 per cent are in the unorganized or informal
sector where they do not have he same rights or
security as have workers in the formal sector.

20. • Reproductive Work : It encompasses care and
maintenance of the household and its
members, including bearing and nurturing
children, cooking, washing and collecting
water, fuel wood and fodder. Reproductive
work is crucial to human survival, yet is
seldom considered as ‘real work’, because it is
not subject to quantification by national
accounting systems. However, reproductive
work is not only largely unpaid, it is also
labour intensive, time consuming and mostly
the responsibility of women or young girls in
family.

21. • Community Work : This is the third category of work
which is used to define all the activities that men and
women do beyond the household. As, for example,
attending / participating in panchyat meetings,
organizing community events such as marriages or
festival celebrations, managing community resources
such as hand-pumps, well or sanitation facilities. In
general women extend their ‘nurturing’ roles to the
community by assuming responsibility for the provision
of collective goods, such as clean water or health care.
The extent to which women can manage such
enterprises varies according to their skills and abilities
(technical, financial), the time they have to participated
in community meetings as well as the nature of the
group formed (mixed or separate women’s group).

22. • Men because of their relatively easier access to the
public domain and the cultural authority they have
vested in them, tend to assume community
leadership roles.
• Whereas women are involved in mixed organizations
they tend to form the ‘rank and file’ and are often
socially unable to speak out in meeting.
• To some extent this has changed with the 73rd and
74th constitutional Amendments calling for one-third
representation of women and SCs/STs in Panchayat
Raj Institutions (PRIs).
• But in practice in many parts of the country men still
continue to operate as ‘leaders’ behind their elected
wives/mother/daughter/in law.

23. ROLE OF WOMEN IN AGRICULTURE

24. • Women in agricultural families perform many
farm-related activities, both within and
outside the household, in most parts of the
country.
• They constitute a large part of the total work
force in agriculture.
• Although the pattern of division of labour
between men and women varies greatly from
region to region, women are involved in most
of the operations in agriculture, including
subsidiary enterprises like dairy, poultry,
beekeeping, mushroom cultivation,
sericulture, fish culture, social forestry etc.

25. • So far as crop husbandry is concerned,
women participate in almost all activities,
right from preparatory tillage to harvest, and
even in post-harvest tasks like processing,
storage and marketing.
• There is general taboo (restriction) on
women engaging in ploughing, but in
exceptional circumstances even ploughing is
done by them.

26. • In crop husbandry/farming process women are
involved in the each and every activity,
preparation of land, selection of seed or
cuttings, transplanting/planting or seeding
(sowing/dibbling), fertilizer and manure
application, weeding, thinning, gap filling,
interculturing, irrigation, harvesting, threshing,
shelling, hulling, winnowing, drying,
processing, grading, storage of the produce
and even marketing also.
• The cash crops or food crops both are
involved.

27. • In livestock production the multifaceted role
like collection and preparation of fodder,
feeding the animals, watering and cleaning of
the cattles, herding, milking, sheaving or
other harvesting activities and care of sick
animals.
• Looking after the poultry birds and milch
animals are the main jobs for women.

28. • In farm and social forestry sector the work
like gathering of forest products for
domestic/household use, gathering fuel
wood, gathering forest materials for use to
craft or commercial products, planting,
protecting or caring for seedlings and
small tress, planting and maintaining
home stead wood lots and plantations on
public or government lands.

29. • Activities related to home or
household like food preparation and
cooking, fuel and water collection,
education and health care of children,
laundry and cleaning utensils, house
maintenance (structural), artisan and
craft production, and performance of
social obligations which are
unaccounted and it is assumed to be
performed by only women in most of
the families.

30. • It may, however, be mentioned that
regardless of the economics status,
higher caste women usually avoid doing
field work. Their activities are confined
within and at best around the
homestead. By and large the main role
of women in high income group is only
supervisory type in agriculture.

31. • New areas and role of women :
• Soil testing : It is scientific tool to assess
inherent soil fertility. Success of programme
lies in proper sample collection thro’ trained
women in this aspect.
• Wealth from organic waste : Trained farm
women can teach manurial value of their
farm waste, composting sugarcane trash,
weeds, other crop residues, integrated use of
these enriched farm waste with chemical
fertilizer there by reducing fertilizer bill. This
natural resource management is very useful
to farmers.

32. • Crop cultivation : 40 % women involved
Fisheries – 43 % of women engaged in allied
of activities.
• Sericulture : Another field for women to play
important role. Carry out almost 60-65 % of
activities in sericulture industry.
• Weed management : Nearly 35 % of women’s
active role in all field operations.

33. • Production & processing plantation crops :
Crucial role, involved in weeding, mulching,
pot watering in coconut, plucking, picking
and sorting in tea, coffee and flowers.
Tapping rubber plantation, picking and
cleaning of cardamom and herbs. Also
involved in ornamental plants, fruits and
vegetable processing industry and marketing
of horticultural produce.

34. • Livestock : 25 % of women are actively
participate, mainly responsible for dairy. In
India about 80 million women participates in
Dairying and about 20 million in Animal
Husbandry.
• 70-80 % field work, 85 % of economically
active women engaged in agriculture and
allied sector.

35. WORK STRESS FACTORS
• The participation of women in agriculture,
though increasing, it is influenced by many
factors. The main role of women in agriculture is
mostly confined as the agricultural labour. The
work which women’s perform in the farm and
allied related sector is diversified and changes
frequently. Therefore the stress is always while
performing the activities.
• The various work stress factors for women in
agriculture can be grouped in following
categories viz., physical, environmental, type of
work (nature of work)

36. • 1) Physical :
The physical condition of the women often
creates stress while performing the labourious
or hard work. The physical condition involves,
health, age, body structure etc.
• The female Child/daughter often engaged in
agricultural work at early stages. The women in
poor peasants family is often malnourished
and undernourished i.e. food available to her is
always deficient or the balance diet is not
available, as well as the available food is
insufficient to meet the calorie requirement.

37. • This results in poor health and anemic
condition of the farm women. This affects the
work efficiency as well as in order to
complete the work in stipulated time the
stress in experienced by her.
• Besides working in the field women are
performing the reproductive role of bearing
the rearing the child. During the pregnancy or
child bearing stage, the undernourishment
and physical condition often creates stress
while participating in agricultural activities.

38. • 2) Environmental :
• The environmental condition in India
varies in the different seasons in the year as
well as from one region to another in the
country. The weather conditions fluctuates
every day that affects the efficiency of the
women to work, as well as climatic
conditions in the different seasons is
different but she has to work under good as
well as bad weather situations.

39. • It can be seen from the climatic
conditions of the high mountain
cold regions of country like Ladakh.
In these regions at high elevation
the oxygen content in the
atmosphere goes on decreasing
with increase in height of the
location from mean sea level. It
affects the blood circulation in the
body adversely.

40. • It creates health problems like blood
pressure, head ache etc. Under such climatic
conditions women have to work and it
creates stress while working and effects work
efficiency. In these regions during winter
season, the temperature was always below
10oC. Under such conditions the special
health care is needed but the women in
these regions are always deprived of it.

41. • 3) Type of work (Nature of work) :
The exclusively hard work like transplanting,
weeding, harvesting, threshing etc. in crop
production during the peak period always
creates stress on the women. Further these
operations can be performed in skillful manner
to reduce the drudgery. But the skill achieved in
these work by women herself by constant
engagement in work and no any training or skill
enhancing programmes were arranged or
almost this fact is neglected. Thus the type of
work and the time bound work often creates
stress on the physical condition of the women.

42. NUTRITIONAL AND RURAL LIFE STANDARD
• The problem of malnutrition and under nutrition
is widely prevalent in India, especially amongst
the vulnerable groups of population (i.e. infants,
and pre-school children, pregnant and lactating
women, aged and sick ones).
• Poverty, low purchasing power, lack of nutrition
knowledge, wrong cooking practices and
prevalence of social taboos are important factors
contributing to the malnutrition. Even though
the available foods are not utilized properly due
to the wrong cooking practice followed by
women.

43. • A research study with poor and mostly
illiterate rural women of Hissar district of
Haryana conducted using the extension
methods like lectures, demonstrations, posters,
leaflets and their combinations.
• The conclusion of the study was that
inadequate knowledge about cooking practices
were possessed by majority of women’s.
• Wrong cooking practices were followed by
most of them, nutrition education brought a
significant gains in knowledge and
improvement in practices.

44. • As women play a crucial role in the
selection, preparation and serving food;
educating them will help in improving
the nutritional status of masses,
specially the vulnerable groups. This will
also help in increasing the awareness of
women which will go a long way in
improving the overall nutritional status
of the community.

45. • The National Nutritional Policy (NNP),
1993 articulates nutritional consideration in
all important policy instruments of govt. and
identifies short term and long-term measures
necessary to improve the nutritional status of
women, children and the country as a whole.
• The position of women in traditional
Indian society can be measured by their
autonomy in decision making and by the
degree of access they have to the outside
world.

46. • By these measures, Indian women,
particularly those in North, fare poorly.
• Women are dominated not only by the men
they have married but also by their new in-
laws, especially the older females.
• Women are frequently prevented from
working outside the home and traveling
without an escort, and this has profound
implications for their access to information
and assistance.

47. • The money they earn, the dwellings in
which they live, and even their reproductive
careers are not in their own control but male
dominated. In addition, the work they perform
is socially devalued.
• This inherently inequitable social system is
perpetuated through a process of socialization
that rationalizes and internalizes the female
disadvantage.
• The consequences of women’s unfavorable
status, such as food, and in access to health
care and education, as well as marriage at
young ages.

48. • Daughters are generally considered a net
liability; they often require a dowry, they leave
their original homes after marriage, and their
labour is devalued.
• The result is strong preference for sons which
is readily apparent in the relative neglect of
female children, who are weaned earlier than
males, receive smaller quantities of less
nutritious food and less medical care, and are
more likely to be removed from school.
• This inequitable treatment continues into
women’s adult lives.

49. • Beginning in childhood, more rural women
fulfill multiple productive functions in
addition to bearing children and performing
household functions.
• The recent agricultural innovations have little
advantage for the rural women, who still
perform primarily manual labour.
• The fertility of female members also
discouraged with deliberate effort to prevent
conception, or through abortion and most of
the family planning programmes are female
oriented.