Women Farmers- Unspoken part of India's Food system

When we picture a farmer in India, the image is almost always of a man standing tall in a field, sickle in hand, tilling the soil. But the reality shows a different picture. According to the National Sample Survey data, 80% of economically active women in India are employed in agriculture sector. Yet their role in agriculture largely remains invisible and policies rarely take them into account.

These women work on their family land, as daily wage labourers, and in looking after livestock, making them the backbone of our food systems.

In the past decade, due to shrinking farm income, Indian workforce have drawn rural men into higher-paying non-farm jobs, leaving women to replace them to do the agricultural work. As a result, women’s employment in agriculture surged by 135%.

Yet, this rise has come with diminishing returns. Nearly half of the women in agriculture are unpaid "family workers", with their numbers jumping 2.5 times from 23.6 million to 59.1 million in just eight years.

Much of this invisibility stems from systemic inequities. Women are not officially recognized as farmers, own only 13-14% of land holdings, and earn 20-30% less than men for equivalent work.

As a result, women’s greater participation has not translated into higher income for the economy, as agriculture’s share of the national Gross Value Added fell from 15.3% in 2017-18 to 14.4% in 2024-25. Therefore, the ‘feminisation of agriculture; has, in a way, reinforced inequities rather than enabling women’s economic empowerment.

According to ILO Report, 81% of the female agricultural labourers belong to Dalit, Adivasi and OBC communities. The largest share of casual and landless labourers also come from these social groups making the inequlaity in India systemic and severe.

Women Decision making in Farming:

Against this backdrop, a newly published study from rural Karnataka offers critical insight into women’s decision-making in agriculture. Drawing on the Karnataka Household Asset Survey (KHAS) data from 4110 rural households in the state , the study compares men’s and women’s perspectives on who manages and makes key decisions in farming — particularly in households affected by short-term male migration.

Part of a larger multi-country research initiative across India, Ecuador, and Ghana, the study investigates the gender asset gap, using rigorous data to unravel how control over resources, knowledge, and decisions is distributed within rural households.

Lead author Hema Swaminathan tells that the study stemmed from a broader concern around the lack of gender-disaggregated data in India. She points out that poverty is typically measured at the household level, overlooking inequalities within the house and individual ownership of assets. Even large-scale surveys like the National Sample Survey (NSS), she notes, record land or house ownership in the name of the household, failing to identify which member actually owns it — a critical gap when addressing gendered economic disparities.

“In reality, there is significant disparity in how resources are distributed, and this often plays out along gender lines. Women are highly marginalised when it comes to ownership of valuable property,” she explains. During data collection, Swaminathan says the team explored various dimensions of women’s voice and agency — of which decision-making surfaced as a particularly telling indicator.

Combining qualitative fieldwork with quantitative methods by including both spouses in survey with identical questions on decision-making — the researchers were able to compare responses, revealing discrepancies in perceived agency. The study found that assumptions around joint decision-making within households often did not hold up.

In some cases, men claimed women were involved in decisions, while women denied this — suggesting either a social desirability bias among men or internalized patriarchy among women. “In most domains though, both men and women agreed that men controlled decisions,” says Swaminathan, underscoring persistent gendered power imbalances. These disparities extended beyond the household into agricultural decision-making.

Asset ownership, decision-making power, and access to credit and government support remain male-dominated, trapping women in low-value activities.

As experts say that a lot of decision-making hinges on land ownerships that have been historically denied to women.

Other common issues women farmers face outside of family include,

• Access to credit: A lack of ownership of land does not allow women farmers to approach banks for institutional loans as banks usually consider land as collateral.

  
  

• Access to technology: Mechanization of agriculture has resulted in confinement of women in low paying traditional works. Further, most farm machinery is difficult for women to operate.

  
  

• Access to education, training and extension services: Access to education, agricultural training and extension services for women has been predominantly low as compared to men.

  
  

• Managing different roles: In addition to intensive work on the farm all day, women are also expected to fulfil domestic obligations like cooking, child rearing, water collection, fuel wood gathering, household maintenance etc.

  
  

• Wage: Despite more work for longer hours when compared to male farmers, women farmers have lower wage rates and at times remain unpaid.

  
  

• Marketing: Small and marginal farmers in India lack adequate access to marketing facilities due to lack of basic infrastructure like market yards, roads and transportation, and storage including freezers and presence of middlemen. Additional constraints for women include seclusion, lack of literacy, knowledge and information. Further, women have no representation in agricultural marketing committees and other similar bodies.

  
  

Navigating systemic barriers

This disconnect is compounded by structural barriers: agricultural systems are largely tailored to male farmers. Women often struggle to access quality seeds, fertilizers, training, and extension services, which remain oriented towards men.

Debottam Saha, research assistant at Welthungerhilfe India (WHH), who has studied women’s land rights across Rajasthan, Jharkhand, and West Bengal. Saha notes that in West Bengal, there are isolated instances where women hold land titles, mainly attributed to recent state policies encouraging homestead land registration in women’s names. While these initiatives suggest the promise of gender-responsive policymaking, they often fall short by excluding cultivable land, limiting real empowerment.

The experts recommends that there is an urgent need for India to regularly gather individual-level data on agricultural decision-making and asset ownership. Without robust, gender-disaggregated data and policy intervention, women’s contributions to farming will remain undervalued and invisible in policy frameworks. This becomes especially critical as women’s participation in agriculture continues to rise amid broader socio-economic transformations in rural India. So, experts argue, policy framework should take these into account while designing policies for farmers.

Agrarian crisis of India which is least spoken in India, is affecting women very seriously is what we can see from this data. This is multiplied by patriarchial system which pushes women into the corners of the system.

Overcoming the gender gap with support, awareness and empowerment measures for India’s female farmers is crucial for improving livelihoods and food security, as well as the progress of sustainable agriculture .We believe that empowering women is fundamental to the success of sustainable agriculture and also to establish an equitable society.

Solution lies in understanding the problem rightly. This article is initiative towards understanding the problem.

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About the Author:

Karthik, is an Independent Writer, working on indigenous seed conservation, sustainable agriculture and agrarian crisis from 2019. He can be reached at, karthik@richhariyafoundation.org