Context: According to the agricultural census, 73.2% of rural women are engaged in farming activities but only 12.8% own landholdings. 

‘Gendered’ problem in agriculture:
Land ownership

• According to Oxfam (2013), around 80 per cent of farm work is undertaken by women in India. However, they own only 13 per cent of the land. 
• Recent statistics released by the University of Maryland and the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER, 2018) state that women constitute over 42 per cent of the agricultural labour force in India, but own less than two per cent of farmland.
• Due to cultural, social and religious forces, women have been denied ownership of land. 
• The India Human Development Survey reports that 83% of agricultural land in the country is inherited by male members of the family and less than 2% by their female counterparts. 

Definition of farmer: Women are mostly left without any title of land in their names and are excluded from the definition of farmers. 

• The government labels them as ‘cultivators’ or ‘agricultural labourers’ but not ‘farmers’. 
• Without any recognition, women are systematically excluded from all the benefits of government schemes. 
• Marginalised communities: Besides, 81% of women agricultural labourers belong to Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, and Other Backward Classes, so they also contribute to the largest share of casual and landless labourers.
• Farm widows: Since the advent of liberalisation, more than 300,000 farmers have committed suicide to escape vicious poverty, debt, and humiliation over the past twenty years.
• In Maharashtra alone, according to reported statistics (BBC, 2014), there are more than 53,000 farm widows. Out of these, around 10,600 live in Vidarbha, the farmer suicide capital of the country.
• Denied rights: 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.

They are not guaranteed the rights which they would otherwise be given if they were recognised as farmers, such as loans for cultivation, loan waivers, crop insurance, subsidies or even compensation to their families in cases where they commit suicide.
Gender divide

• They have unequal access to rights over land, water and forests. 
• There is gendered access to support systems such as storage facilities, transportation costs, and cash for new investments or for paying off old dues or for other services related to agricultural credit. 
• There is also gendered access to inputs and markets. 

Concerns with the farm laws: Women are barely in a position as empowered agents who can either understand or negotiate (written) agreements with traders and corporate entities who are seeking to enter into agreements with the farmers to purchase their produce or for other services. 

• Thus, despite their large contribution to the sector, women farmers have been reduced to a marginal section, vulnerable to exploitation.

Reasons behind: A number of factors constrain women in exercising their legal rights including 

• patrilocal post-marital residence, 
• village exogamy, 
• opposition to mobility from men, 
• traditionally institutionalised gender roles, 
• low female literacy and awareness, 
• male dominance in administrative, judicial, and other public decision-making bodies at all levels.

Significance of women in agriculture

• According to the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO, 2011), empowering women through land and ownership rights has the potential of raising total agricultural output in developing countries by 2.5 to 4 per cent and can reduce hunger across the world by 12-17 per cent.
• The Sustainable Development Goal (SDG #5. a.1), seeks to grant property rights and tenure security of agricultural land to women. 

Road Ahead

• Minimise the gulf between ownership versus control of land by addressing patriarchal conventions and bottlenecks in interpersonal legislations, to achieve economic equality in gender, as also guaranteed by the Indian Constitution, under the aegis of Article 14.
• Women centric laws: In 2011, M S Swaminathan, Rajya Sabha member (2007-13) proposed the ‘Women Farmers Entitlement Bill’, which lapsed in 2013. 
• With increasing recognition being given to the contribution of women in agriculture such as by commemorating the ‘Rashtriya Mahila Kisan Divas’, it is time that such legislations and institutional reform in agriculture are addressed.
• Policy paralysis in granting entitlements to women in agriculture and farm widows needs to be addressed to empower rural women economically, politically, socially, and psychologically.