Feminization of agriculture in Asia
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In recent years, Asia experienced a consistent poverty reducing pattern and low income inequality. However, the picture of overall gains in gender outcome is more nuanced. Women’s experience of economic growth and macro economic reform is mediated through their gendered position within the household and outside.
The problem lies in power, poverty and in inequality, not in the physical availability of resources. Women and girls face a distinct disadvantage, since they are the ones who sacrifice their opportunity for education and skill development to manage land and agriculture. Lacking informal rights to land in many Asian countries, women are largely excluded from training, extension and irrigation management. The deep-seated social inequalities (e.g., the household division of labour, gender norms on women speaking in public and constraints on their mobility and pervasive violence within the home and outside) go against women having an effective voice in community management or farmers’ associations. This paper is an attempt at drawing attention to the complex inter-relationship between women agricultural producers and their lack of rights to land and the related factors of production. It further explores implications for the producers’ economic agency and productivity; whether or not women’s participation in agriculture has undermined farm income. Studies on land and agriculture in Asia and Africa show that gender inequalities (both socially-embedded and the new such as the increased gender wage gap in rural China during the marketization of economy) affect rural and agricultural development (Agarwal, 2003; Lastarria 2002; Kelkar, Nathan and Walter, 2003; FAO, 2006; Song and Chen, 2006). That ensuring equal lands and asset rights to women and men increases economic opportunities; encourages investment in land and crop production; improves household food security; enhances women’s agency and leads to better agricultural management. The trend towards the increased number of women and agricultural production appears to be linked with a variety of factors, such as male rural out migration, the growing number of women-headed households and the development labour-intensive cash crops. These lead to change in the traditional gender division of farm work and women taking up at lower wages the tasks formerly done only by men, such as land preparation, cultivation of crops, spraying pesticides, harvesting, post-harvesting and marketing of the produce. Despite the substantial amount of time allocated to domestic work, rural women also reported a kind of empowerment in the absence of men, in the sense they manage small budgets and household decisions. Further, women’s mobility is increased as they go to the local market to sell their products. However, in the case of bigger items they tend to rely on the older male relatives. In an analysis of feminization of agriculture in China, Zhang (2002) noted that rural women, particularly younger generation women, increasingly control household income and make decisions about the sale of agricultural products, investment and purchase of large items such as houses and consumer durables. Feminization of agriculture The phenomenon of increasing feminization of agriculture has drawn policy attention in recent years. However, the causes, the extent and its impact on women and productivity have not received sufficient concern in policy and practice throughout the Asia (IFAD 2005). Insufficient attention to some work sites where women are most active, such as cultivation of crops and vegetables, regeneration of degraded forests, wasteland development and watershed development, has meant that women’s contributions and concerns remain invisible in planning and thus are ignored in Agriculture Knowledge and technology institutions (Sujaya, 2006). Further, the stress on self-employment and dependence on institutional credit in most land-based economic activities meant that women, who are mostly landless in many Asia, would not be eligible for assistance beyond the rearing of livestock for income. Although it has been recognized that rural women have an important role in livestock (such as animal care, grazing, fodder collection, cleaning of animal shed, processing of milk and sale of livestock products), their control over livestock and product is minimal. With some regional variations, women account for 93 percent of employment in dairy production in India. But 75 percent of dairy cooperative membership is male (Sujaya, 2006). Women’s livestock activities have been conventionally viewed as an extension of domestic work around the house, sometime women can fit in their work, no economic incentive to introduce improvement. There is, however, one exception of dairying, whose distribution of milch cattle became one of the main activities in poverty reduction programmes in India. Importantly, introducing taxes and limits to over grazing, uncontrolled burning and deforestation (largely caused by the expansion of livestock sector) are likely to prove effective steps for increased productivity and sustainability. A Gender Assessment Report of China for IFAD (2005) indicated that women constitute about 70 percent of the agricultural labour force and perform more than 70 percent of farm labour, though it varies from place to place. A general pattern is that the poorer the area, the higher women’s contribution, largely as subsistence farmers, who farm small pieces of land, often less than 0.2 hectares. In India, close to 33 percent of cultivators and nearly 47 percent of agricultural workers are women (Vepa, 2005). This feminization of agriculture is caused by increased casualization of work, unprofitable crop production and distress migration of men “for higher casual work in agriculture and non-agriculture sectors”, leaving women to take up low paid casual work in agriculture (Sujaya, 2006: 5). Throughout the region women are more likely than men to work in agriculture. Also, manufacturing tends to employ a fairly large number of women followed by trade, hotel and restaurant businesses. |
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