TY - JOUR
T1 - What determines women's agricultural participation? A comparative study of landholding households in rural India
AU - Pattnaik, Itishree
AU - Lahiri-Dutt, Kuntala
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 Elsevier Ltd
PY - 2020/5
Y1 - 2020/5
N2 - This paper examines the key socioeconomic and cultural-demographic factors that determine rural women's labour contributions in agriculture in India, both on family farms (either as cultivators or as family labour) and as agricultural wage labourer. Based on the analysis of primary data derived from a survey of 800 households from the two Indian states of Gujarat and West Bengal, it establishes that women's work in the farm sector cannot be homogenized. Women's work as additional hands in family farms differs from that as wage labourers which is casual in nature; their work also differs across different regions. In the commercialized, relatively more developed state of Gujarat, women's labour contributions are significantly different from West Bengal's less commercialized agrarian economy. The paper concludes that feminization of agriculture in India is distress-led where it has both class (defined with income in Gujarat) and caste (social groups) connotations in Gujarat, while mainly economic factors influence women's work in the farm sector in West Bengal.
AB - This paper examines the key socioeconomic and cultural-demographic factors that determine rural women's labour contributions in agriculture in India, both on family farms (either as cultivators or as family labour) and as agricultural wage labourer. Based on the analysis of primary data derived from a survey of 800 households from the two Indian states of Gujarat and West Bengal, it establishes that women's work in the farm sector cannot be homogenized. Women's work as additional hands in family farms differs from that as wage labourers which is casual in nature; their work also differs across different regions. In the commercialized, relatively more developed state of Gujarat, women's labour contributions are significantly different from West Bengal's less commercialized agrarian economy. The paper concludes that feminization of agriculture in India is distress-led where it has both class (defined with income in Gujarat) and caste (social groups) connotations in Gujarat, while mainly economic factors influence women's work in the farm sector in West Bengal.
KW - Agrarian distress
KW - Feminization of agriculture
KW - India
KW - Logit model
KW - Male out-migration
KW - Women's decision-making
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85082722931&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.jrurstud.2020.03.008
DO - 10.1016/j.jrurstud.2020.03.008
M3 - Article
SN - 0743-0167
VL - 76
SP - 25
EP - 39
JO - Journal of Rural Studies
JF - Journal of Rural Studies
ER -