In sociology, feminization is explained as a shift in gender roles and sex roles in a society, group, or organization towards a focus upon the feminine. It can also mean the incorporation of women into a group or a profession that was once dominated by men.
Agricultural feminization—which can be defined as the quantifiable increase of women in agricultural decision making and farm management—can happen in several ways.
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.
Women in agriculture are affected by issues of recognition and in the absence of land rights, female agricultural labourers, farm widows, and tenant farmers are left bereft of recognition as farmers, and the consequent entitlements.
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. Various activities taken up by women in Agriculture and its allied activities are:
Type of agricultural activities taken up by women include:
Economic Survey 2017-18 says that 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
Social inclusion refers to the removal of institutional barriers and the enhancement of incentives to increase the access of diverse individuals and groups to development opportunities. Empowerment, equal and meaningful participation in decision-making, access to and control over resources, benefit sharing, and balancing power relations are key areas for development
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.
The women labour force in agriculture and their contribution towards advancements of society are evident but the social dogma and long historical perception put their contribution under the scope of disparity and widened the gender divide, But the recent trends shows a growth by providing them a better opportunity in various sectors – which is best known as Women Empowerment and Empowerment through any means can leverage the true potential of any section of people..Thus attention and recognising women and their work will have a great impact and aid in achieving our targets focused on comprehensive growth of nation
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