Meetu Singh
Introduction
Women-led development is increasingly recognised as a critical driver of India’s economic transformation. This reality is most visible in agriculture, which remains the backbone of rural livelihoods and employs the largest share of India’s female workforce. Over the past decade, women’s participation in farming has increased sharply, largely due to men migrating to non-farm employment. However, this growing presence has not translated into economic empowerment. Instead, women’s labour remains largely invisible, unpaid, and undervalued, revealing deep-rooted structural inequities within India’s agrarian economy.
Women’s agricultural work remains invisible not because their contribution is small, but because the structure of India’s agrarian economy is designed in a way that does not formally “see” women as farmers. This invisibility is produced by overlapping institutional, economic, and social factors.
Skewed Land Ownership Denies Farmer Identity
In India, land ownership functions as the primary basis for recognising someone as a farmer, and this criterion systematically excludes most women from formal agricultural identity. With only about 13–14% of land holdings registered in women’s names, the majority of women who work daily on farms lack legal recognition as cultivators. The absence of land titles denies them access to institutional credit from banks, crop insurance and disaster compensation, direct income support, and government subsidies, while also excluding them from official farmer databases and records. Consequently, even when women manage farms independently in the absence of men, they are routinely classified as “helpers” or “family labour” rather than farmers in their own right. This legal invisibility has serious economic consequences, as it prevents women from securing financial resources, protection, and decision-making power, reinforcing their marginalisation within the agricultural system.
Wage Discrimination and Task Segregation Mask Economic Value
Women consistently earn 20–30% less than men for comparable agricultural work, reinforcing the perception that their labour is secondary and less valuable. This wage gap is closely linked to gender-based task segregation within agriculture, where women are largely confined to labour-intensive, low-paid activities such as sowing, transplanting, weeding, harvesting, and post-harvest processing. In contrast, men tend to dominate mechanised operations, marketing, and price negotiations—roles that command higher wages and provide greater control over income and decision-making. As a result, women’s agricultural work is often framed as merely “supportive” rather than productive, leading to systematic undervaluation and, in many cases, non-payment, despite their labour being indispensable to overall farm productivity.
Declining Farm Incomes Deepen Women’s Vulnerability
To convert women’s growing participation in agriculture into genuine empowerment, comprehensive structural reforms are essential. Land and labour reforms must promote joint or individual land ownership for women and formally recognise them as independent farmers, enabling access to credit, insurance, and state support. Women also need to be integrated into higher-value segments of the agricultural value chain, such as processing, branding, packaging, and exporting, to enhance incomes and decision-making power. Digital inclusion is equally critical and requires the expansion of affordable devices, targeted training, and voice-first platforms designed around women’s needs. At the institutional level, effective coordination among government agencies, NGOs, Farmer Producer Organisations, and financial institutions is necessary to dismantle entrenched inequities. Finally, investments in social infrastructure, including childcare facilities, reliable water access, and clean energy—can substantially reduce women’s time poverty and create the conditions for sustained economic and social empowerment.
Drivers of Feminisation in Indian Agriculture
Women are increasingly bearing the burden of farm labour due to a combination of economic shifts and entrenched social structures. Large-scale male out-migration to cities and to non-farm rural occupations such as construction, transport, services, and government work has left women responsible for managing and sustaining family farms. At the same time, the expansion of contract farming in floriculture, horticulture, and tea and coffee plantations has intensified the demand for women workers, who are often viewed as patient, skilled, and more likely to accept lower wages and insecure conditions. Deep-rooted patriarchal norms further reinforce this trend by treating women’s agricultural labour as an extension of domestic responsibility rather than as productive economic work deserving recognition and remuneration. Compounding these factors, limited access to education, restricted mobility, and prevailing social expectations sharply reduce women’s non-farm employment opportunities, making agriculture one of the few viable and socially acceptable livelihood options for rural women.
Systemic Barriers to Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture
Women’s progress in agriculture is constrained by a set of overlapping structural barriers that reinforce one another and limit both productivity and empowerment. Persistent wage discrimination weakens women’s economic independence, even when they perform the same or more labour-intensive tasks as men. Their exclusion from decision-making spaces—such as agricultural extension services, cooperatives, and local institutions—means they have limited access to information, technology, and policy support, and their voices rarely shape farming practices or priorities. Farm machinery and tools are largely designed for male physiques, making them difficult for women to use efficiently and increasing physical strain and drudgery. At the same time, unpaid domestic and caregiving responsibilities create severe time poverty, restricting women’s ability to access markets, training programs, and leadership roles. Most critically, the denial of land ownership and formal farmer identity keeps women outside institutional systems of credit, insurance, and government support, perpetuating their marginalisation within agriculture.
Opportunities from Trade, Technology, and Markets
Despite persistent challenges, several emerging opportunities have the potential to significantly transform women’s roles in agriculture. Trade agreements such as the India–UK Free Trade Agreement, which is expected to raise agricultural exports by nearly 20%, can open new and expanded markets for crops where women already have a strong presence, including tea, spices, millets, rice, and dairy. At the same time, digital technologies are creating new pathways for inclusion by linking women farmers to price discovery, markets, and advisory services through platforms such as e-NAM, mobile-based extension systems, and precision agriculture tools. Initiatives like BHASHINI, Jugalbandi, and Digital Sakhi are helping overcome language, literacy, and access barriers by providing voice-based, multilingual digital services. Together with the growing success of women-led Farmer Producer Organisations in states such as Odisha and Rajasthan, which use digital branding and export linkages, these developments show how technology and trade can help shift women from unpaid agricultural labour to income-generating entrepreneurship.
Structural Reforms Needed
To convert women’s growing participation in agriculture into genuine empowerment, comprehensive structural reforms are essential. Land and labour reforms must promote joint or individual land ownership for women and formally recognise them as independent farmers, enabling access to credit, insurance, and state support. Women also need to be integrated into higher-value segments of the agricultural value chain, such as processing, branding, packaging, and exporting, to enhance incomes and decision-making power. Digital inclusion is equally critical and requires the expansion of affordable devices, targeted training, and voice-first platforms designed around women’s needs. At the institutional level, effective coordination among government agencies, NGOs, Farmer Producer Organisations, and financial institutions is necessary to dismantle entrenched inequities. Finally, investments in social infrastructure—including childcare facilities, reliable water access, and clean energy—can substantially reduce women’s time poverty and create the conditions for sustained economic and social empowerment.
GIRLS PROUTIST FARMER FEDERATION
A department under the trade Girls Proutist speaks explicitly about, how Prout stands for women Farmer
PROUT (Progressive Utilisation Theory), propounded by Shri Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar, offers a principle-based framework that guarantees equality, dignity, and economic justice for women, including women farmers.
Prout advocates –
- Farming – Decision is purely of a woman
PROUT insists that women should participate in agriculture according to their choice, capacity, and social need. Any participation must be dignified. No woman would be forced into farming due to lack of alternatives.
- Economic Equality, Economic say
In the field of agriculture, this means:
- Equal access to credit, inputs, technology, training, and markets
- Equal remuneration for equal work
- Cooperative Agriculture and Gender Justice
PROUT advocates cooperative farming as the ideal agricultural model. In such cooperatives:
- Women are full members, not auxiliary labour
- Decision-making is collective and democratic, ensuring women’s voices
- Profits are distributed equitably.
Under PROUT, women’s participation would naturally rise to a fair and balanced level, because structural barriers—not capability—currently suppress their agency.
- Prout advocates industrialization of Agriculture.
At the moment agriculture is unorganized sector, due to which exploitation is rampant in it. Once industrialization status is achieved, all by laws will be applied, hence it will help to minimize the exploitation of farmers.
