Women in agriculture
Agricultural extension services are typically skewed against men in many developing nations, providing material that is frequently not formatted for women in agriculture as members of farming households and that is primarily directed at male members of the household.
However, from different types of research these services may also be advantageous to female farmers as it may influence their capacity to make wise decisions, enhancing farm productivity, household income, and welfare. Although women make up the majority of the agricultural workforce, their labour has mostly gone underpaid globally.
Women in agriculture performs the most laborious and backbreaking jobs in homes, farms, and animal care facilities. By offering instruments that save time and labour, the ICAR institutions' types of research methods has attempted to free her the drudgery of labour. Additionally, vocational trainings are being held to provide students with the skills needed to pursue various vocations. Woman is now the focal focus of extension initiatives, and events are developed with her in mind. Her awakening will alter how rural India looks.
The National Center for Women in Agriculture and Krishi Vigyan Kendras have begun a number of programmes that are the correct moves in that regard.
What is the role of women in agriculture
The world's quickly changing conditions are followed by both the economic and social change processes. Technology advancements and increased transportation opportunities, broad use, and effectiveness of mass media channels, sustainable in market segments and organic farming, and these modifications affect rural women. The necessity of training has increased as a result of this adjustment. The training will guarantee that people will get better resources, more reasonable technological use, and with a quicker capacity to adjust to shifting circumstances.
Consequently, it is essential that women in agriculture participate in they require extension training and should not be disregarded. Women's labour is a significant component of agriculture employment in developing and developing nations
They further transport several obligations pertaining to family life at home. We can conclude that there is sexual discrimination in many nations, which is a significant factor in why women do not fully utilise agricultural extension training.
Woman-man disparity has ruined the traditional balances during development interventions expanded out from male dominating and formal market institutions, causing rural women to lose authority over their own labour and income sources. For women to sufficiently benefit from agricultural extension services, the consequences of entrenched social beliefs related to these sexual roles must be eliminated.
Data collected only 34% or a little more of farms that are self-sustaining, have female farmers, or don't have access to agricultural land use extension resources. Women can only earn from 5% of the source among these categories, and these services cannot be shared equally given the amount of extension activities time. Men are more likely to work in rural areas. Over the years, the paradigm for agricultural extension has changed, moving from top-down "training and visit" techniques to more demand-driven, participatory initiatives like farmer field schools and mobile data services. Although it may increase access, this could also increase the exclusion of women. For instance, ICT services that supply agricultural information still rely on women having access to technology and having the financial means to pay for some private data services.
Women frequently don't have as much access to technology as males do, claims Davis. If there is a radio in the house, it is frequently operated by the male, and the people in it listen to the programmes he chooses. Women farmers have made significant contributions to the agriculture industry and to the economy as a whole. They have been active in all aspects of crop production, including clearing land for planting, harvesting crops, and marketing agricultural products. They also produce cattle and prepare agricultural products and gather forest materials. Women are the best at running the home and taking care of the family's finances by working outside the home as well.
What is role of women in agriculture
It is a well-known truth that women cultivated crop plants first, paving the way for human habitation and the development of farming as an art. Women began collecting seeds and beginning to cultivate them for food, feed, fodder, fibre, and fuel while males went hunting.
Women have played a significant part in protecting the natural resources that provide for our basic needs, such as land, water, vegetation, and fauna.
Through organic recycling, they have not only preserved the health of the soil but also sped up the genetic variety and crop plant conservation processes.
The multifaceted role of women's roles include: Domestic tasks like cooking, raising children, collecting water, gathering fuel-wood, maintaining the home, etc.
Allied tasks like managing cattle, gathering fodder, milking, etc.
Agricultural tasks like sowing, transplanting, weeding, irrigation, fertiliser application, plant protection, harvesting, winnowing, safe storage, etc.
Indian women who live in rural areas actively participate in agriculture. With various agricultural production methods, however, their involvement varies in kind and degree. The way that women participate in agricultural production depends on how many farm households possess land. They can work as managers or as migrant labourers. The average contribution of women across the entire farm production chain is estimated to be between 55 and 66%, with these numbers being substantially higher in some areas.
What is women contribution to agricultural production
According to the secondary data collected 10th Agriculture Census (2015–16), there were 14% more female operational holdings in the nation in 2015–16 than there were in 2010–11.
Agriculture, which makes up roughly 16% of the GDP, is increasingly being carried out by women.
Eighty percent of all economically active women work in the agricultural sector, where they make up 33% of the labour force and 48% of independent farmers.
According to the NSSO Reports, women lead about 18% of farm families in India.
The term "feminization of agriculture" describes how women are becoming more involved in agricultural pursuits. The following interpretations are possible:
An increase in the proportion of women engaged in the agricultural sector, whether as self-employed individuals, wage workers, or unpaid caretakers a rise in the proportion of women working compared to men in agriculture, brought on by either a rise in female employment or a decline in male employment. The degree to which women define, oversee, and implement agricultural procedures
Challenges faced by the women in agriculture as extension workers
In addition to being more at risk for HIV infection due to their frequent travels to rural regions with high HIV/AIDS prevalence, extension employees are also personally affected by the pandemic in numerous ways. Numerous them are ill, some of them occur recurrently. Many of their co-workers have already succumbed to the illness, and more tragic news is dreaded virtually daily. More often than ever, colleagues' deaths are discussed in office meetings. Then, they must shoulder the enormous financial, time, and energy burden of caring for their ailing neighbours and close relatives. Some of them are widowed, leaving them to care for young children while simultaneously grieving the loss of their spouses.
As agriculture becomes more commercialised and moves from subsistence to cash cropping, women are compelled to work on marginal grounds or may even lose access to the land. According to Henn (1983), the most affordable and dependable way to increase the household food supply is likely to be through the extension and improvement of the traditional women's food sector. It implies that encouraging women to continue farming and boost their production is a good idea.
Female jobs in agriculture
Women encounter a number of obstacles on the job market, such as their disproportionate concentration in precarious occupations, vertical and horizontal occupational segregation, salary discrepancies, and unequal distribution of unpaid domestic duties. These barriers to mobility in the labour market, the prevalence of part-time or temporary employment, concentration in industries where the effects of global competition drive down pay, and direct discrimination are all factors that disadvantage women in schooling. A variety of legislative measures are needed to address the obstacles women encounter in the labour market initiatives, such as enhancing women's capacity to adjust to changing labour conditions market conditions, encouragement to cut back on unpaid care giving, gender-sensitive labour market laws, and improved ability for group action. It is crucial that all stakeholders—states, the corporate sector, and civil society—take on greater responsibility for providing care.
The distribution of unpaid work, such as caring, between men and women has not significantly increased despite women's growing participation in the labour market, which has an impact on women's employment options. Many nations have implemented policies regarding working conditions, such as shorter workdays, more flexible work hours and locations.
Access to other useful resources
Women continue to confront prejudice in many parts of the world when trying to acquire land, housing, property, and other productive resources. They also have limited access to technologies and services that could ease their burdens at work. Women's ability to assure agricultural production, livelihood security, and food security is limited by unequal access to resources, which is also increasingly linked to poverty, migration, urbanisation, and an increased risk of violence. Urbanization, market expansion, population growth, and climate change have all led to new opportunities and problems for women's access to land, housing, and other productive resources, as well as short- and long-term food and energy crises and climate change.
The appropriateness of various types of property rights, including individual rights, joint-titling rights, and group rights, is determined by socioeconomic conditions. Continued efforts are required to advance gender-sensitive legislation, uphold current laws, improve the accessibility and responsiveness of the justice system to women, and offer legal assistance to women who are attempting to assert their rights. Inequalities in access to land and property can be addressed through land reform initiatives including land-titling projects and resettlement programmes have not, however, proven a successful method of giving women access to land and property in numerous locations around the world.
Proper environment for women in agriculture empowerment
Economic policies that are gender-sensitive should be based on an analytical framework that takes into account all activities—productive and reproductive, paid and unpaid, formal and informal—that contribute to economic prosperity and human well-being. Investments in health, education, and social protection should be made, as well as growth methods that are employment-focused and gender-sensitive. To ensure gender-equitable outcomes, both men and women must be able to combine paid and unpaid employment, and paid work opportunities and unpaid work obligations must be distributed equally among men and women. For gender-equitable results, women must have access to a variety of productive resources, such as land, housing, and natural resources, as well as to infrastructure and services.
Social Structure role in women in agriculture
Traditional methods place restrictions on the household role, rural community role, and national role of women. It is challenging for women to use extension services since they are typically in charge of matters pertaining to the continuation of family life and because their involvement in agricultural production is seen as an extension of this role.
Poverty factor of women in agriculture
As a result of all these limitations, women also experience severe poverty. Their ability to produce money through home or paid output is constrained.
Involvement of women in different sectors
The Department of Agriculture & Cooperation and Farmers Welfare's (DAC&FW) and Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare's different beneficiary-oriented programmes stipulate that States and other Implementing Agencies must spend at least 30% of their budgets on women farmers. These programmes include the National Food Security Mission, the National Mission on Oilseed & Oil Palm, the National Mission on Sustainable Agriculture, the Sub-Mission for Seed and Planting Material, the Sub-Mission on Agricultural Mechanization, and the Mission for Integrated Development of Horticulture.
Under the auspices of the DAC&FW and DAY-NRLM programmes, trainings are being provided to women farmers in order to acquaint them with the most recent innovations in agriculture and related fields. These include Cooperative Education Field Projects under various National Cooperative Development Corporation (NCDC) Schemes and Support to State Extension Programmes for Extension Reforms (ATMA) under Sub-Mission on Agriculture Extension (SMAE). Through National Training Institutes, State Agricultural Management & Extension Training (SAMETIs), Krishi Vigyan Kendras (KVKs), and State Agricultural Universities (SAUs), skill training courses in agriculture and related fields are also offered to farmers, including women farmers, across the nation. Through the community resource persons, agriculture, and related sectors, DAY-NRLM offers trainings on agro-ecological methods. Farmers, especially women farmers, receive instruction on a variety of topics related to agriculture and related industries through KVKs created by the Indian Council for Agricultural Research (ICAR). The KVKs also organise training programmes specifically for women farmers in agriculture and related fields.
The government is taking a number of steps to boost the involvement of women farmers in the agricultural sector. Taking pro-women initiatives like supporting farm women's food security groups, including one Gender Coordinator/State in the team of dedicated extension functionaries supported under ATMA component of SMAE, conducting macro/micro level studies in the area, and providing additional support and assistance to women farmers over and above the male farmers under a few Schemes etC
Some of the national schemes which provide special provisions for women in agriculture are as follows:-
Support for Gender Coordinator
Under ATMA ‘Gender Coordinator’/State in the team of committed extension personnel is there to ensure in order to ensure that funding and benefits for training, capacity building, extension support, etc. are given to them proportionately to their numbers.
Support for Women In Agriculture Food Security Groups (FSGs)
To achieve food security at the domestic/household level, groups of only women farmers must be established and supported under ATMA Cafeteria as a required activity at a cost of Rs. 0.10 lakh per group/year. This will be done by establishing kitchen gardens and encouraging off-farm activities like pig farming, goat farming, beekeeping, etc.
There is support for at least two FSGs per block. Women farmers' representation in decision-making bodies
Women farmers must be represented in State, District, and Block Farmer Advisory Committees by law.
The ideas cover giving rural women access to extension services and ensuring that they gain the most from them. Therefore, it appears to be feasible that living standards will rise, agricultural production and productivity will increase, and society will have more aware families. This is due to the fact that women are the most productive people in the socioeconomic growth of the family. By addressing various shortcomings encountered in the application of agricultural extension services targeted at women, it is possible to deliver a more effective service. The following factors need to be taken into account in order to accomplish this.
Equal and complete participation of women in extension services must be offered.
Extension policies should be created while taking into account the requirements, interests, and issues of women.
In order for women to actively participate in extension programmes, they should be involved in decision-making during the policy-making stage.
Agricultural extension techniques should be chosen so that women may use them, and the ultimate message that will reach women should be developed cautiously. Extension services ought to take a social sex-aware and woman-centred strategy.
Women extension employees typically train women's groups. However, there aren't many female extension staff members worldwide. As a result, there should be more female extension employees.
Women-focused extension initiatives should receive funding from a separate source. Consideration should be given to a comprehensive extension strategy that aims to help both men and women develop the skills necessary to manage household, personal, and familial duties without discriminating between men and women farmers.
The time and location for teaching female farmers should be carefully considered.
Access to audio-visual resources and transportation should be made easier.
Farmers who are women ought to have the same training as males.
Conclusion of women in agriculture
In India, 80% of all economically active women work in the agricultural sector. According to the Economic Survey 2017–18, as more males move from rural to urban areas, the agricultural sector is becoming more "feminised," with more women taking on different occupations such as farmers, business owners, and labourers. In India, women farmers handle the majority of the major farming tasks, from planting to harvesting, although they have less access to resources than their male counterparts. Also to quicken the pace of expansion in the agricultural industry, the gender gap must be closed. Problems with rural women that result from both the substructure and the social structure in rural regions must be resolved. Rural women sharing responsibilities and receiving an equal share of extension services with males should be a given in a democratic rural society. More information should be given regarding the extension subject-matter-specialist in areas of crop production, protection etc. The female extension workers should provide necessary services to the women farmers.