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Encouraging Women's Agricultural Empowerment for Food Stability

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Boosting Female Farmers for Enhanced Food Supply Stability
Boosting Female Farmers for Enhanced Food Supply Stability

Encouraging Women's Agricultural Empowerment for Food Stability

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Women play a significant role in Indian agriculture, with approximately 39% of the labour force and 63% of the workforce in South Asia. However, despite their contributions, women face numerous challenges in accessing resources, technology, and legal recognition. This article explores key policy interventions aimed at promoting gender inclusivity in Indian agriculture and addressing the challenges faced by women farmers.

Programs that support joint land applications and recognition of women’s land ownership, such as under the Forest Rights Act, are crucial in empowering women farmers. By ensuring control over productive assets, these initiatives boost productivity and sustainability.

Targeted Training and Capacity Building

Initiatives like Andhra Pradesh’s Community Managed Natural Farming (CMNF) program prioritise training women, especially women-headed households, in sustainable agricultural practices. This includes promoting agroecological methods, collective decision-making, and women-led leadership structures to enhance their role and resilience.

Gender-sensitive Access to Technology and Resources

Policies that ensure equitable access to innovations like solar irrigation pumps through microfinancing, grants, and gender-focused subsidy criteria can lower financial barriers for women farmers and improve their technical capacity.

Enhancing Women’s Empowerment Dimensions

Interventions focus on improving women’s group membership, freedom of mobility, decision-making power in agricultural and household contexts, and access to agricultural extension services. These factors collectively strengthen women’s autonomy and influence in agriculture.

Promoting Inclusive Research and Innovation

Agricultural development programs emphasise gender-equitable control over productive assets and encourage technologies reducing women’s labor burden, while increasing women’s participation in decision-making at all levels.

Integrating Gender Inclusivity into Food, Water, and Agricultural Policies

There is recognition of the need for gender-inclusive policy frameworks that address systemic barriers, promote women’s participation in farm management and research, and leverage women’s adoption of sustainable practices for food security and climate resilience.

The proposed reforms include universal joint land titling, collateral-free gender credit windows, gender-smart mechanisation hubs, climate-adaptive extension 2.0, and a care-responsive MGNREGS calendar. These initiatives aim to address structural inequalities, improve resource access and skills, and foster women-led collective and sustainable agricultural models.

FAO estimates that equalising women's access to resources could lift global agrifood output by 2-4%. Despite this potential, women in India hold land titles in only 8-14% of cases, and only 6% of women cultivators access e-NAM markets.

Challenges faced by women farmers in India include maternity benefits and creche facilities being absent in MGNREGS worksites during peak agricultural seasons, and disaster relief norms treating women as "dependants," not primary producers. Additionally, the agriculture census in India conflates worker and owner categories, leading to data invisibility for women.

Empowering women in agriculture is a core strategy for increased farm output, improved household nutrition, and a more inclusive rural economy. However, a gender digital gap exists in mobile internet usage in India, with 28% fewer rural women users than men. Travel safety and custom hurdles also deter women's participation in e-NAM markets.

In Rwanda, nationwide joint-spousal land titling raised women's collateral access and led to 20% higher adoption of soil-conserving terraces. In Kenya, SMS-based climate advisories doubled women's maize yields. Mechanisation suites in India are sized for male anthropometrics, with limited research on gender-friendly tools. Heat-stress illnesses and longer water-collection times reduce women's productive hours.

The United Nations General Assembly has proclaimed 2026 as the International Year of the Woman Farmer, highlighting the importance of addressing these challenges and promoting gender inclusivity in agriculture. The Philippines has implemented gender-responsive budget tagging across agricultural line items, and the Mahila Kisan Sashaktikaran Pariyojana (MKSP) is a sub-component of DAY-NRLM, earmarking 30% of funds for women farmers. The Sub-Mission on Agricultural Mechanisation (SMAM) offers subsidies for agricultural equipment, including drones for women Self-Help Groups (SHGs).

In conclusion, promoting gender inclusivity in Indian agriculture requires a multi-faceted approach that addresses structural inequalities, improves resource access and skills, and fosters women-led collective and sustainable agricultural models. By doing so, we can increase productivity, food security, and ecological health in rural India, and contribute to a more inclusive and equitable society.

References:

  1. Indian Agriculture: Women Farmers and Policy Interventions
  2. Gender Equality in Agriculture and Rural Development
  3. Gender and Agriculture: Transforming the Lives of Rural Women
  4. Gender and Agricultural Research for Development
  5. Gender Equality in Agriculture and Food Security
  6. To bolster productivity and sustainability within the Indian agricultural sector, policies must focus on securing land rights and legal recognition for women farmers, especially through initiatives like joint land applications under the Forest Rights Act.
  7. Development programs should prioritize capacity building, with targeted training for women farmers and women-headed households in sustainable agricultural practices, as exemplified by the Andhra Pradesh's Community Managed Natural Farming (CMNF) program.
  8. Gender-sensitive policies should aim to provide equitable access to technology and resources for women farmers, such as solar irrigation pumps, by employing microfinancing, grants, and gender-focused subsidy criteria. These measures can help reduce financial barriers and improve technical capacity among women farmers.

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