The unpaid, unaccounted and underpaid contribution of rural women, not only in agriculture but the overall rural economy, must be counted, along with the inclusion of landless, marginal women farmers in government agricultural schemes.

As the International Day of Rural Women approaches, it is disheartening to note that India not only recorded one of the lowest female labour force participation rates (LFPR) in the world, but that it was also lower than other South Asian countries except Afghanistan and Pakistan. The Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) data indicates that for women in the working age group (15-59 years), LFPR is only 35.6 per cent in India with the participation rate being 39.3 per cent and 26.5 per cent, respectively, in rural and urban areas in 2021-22. Notably, from 2017 to 2021, women’s LFPR increased relative to men, particularly in rural areas because of the larger engagement of rural women in agriculture and allied activities.

Education and age group-wise classification of LFPR reveals that the recent increase in rural women’s LFPR is entirely explained by the increase in self-employment. Nearly three-fourth of rural working women were involved in agriculture and allied activities and more than half worked as unpaid family helpers (in household business without getting any payment) during 2021-22. Furthermore, married women were more prone to taking on the role of unpaid family helpers or engaging in domestic chores.

Rural women working as regular and casual wage workers faced a higher gender wage gap compared to urban women and self-employed women received less than half of men’s earnings, indicating a higher gender earning gap as compared to other categories of workers in rural areas. For the self-employed, this gap has further deteriorated from 2017 to 2021.

A significant proportion of women are involved in unpaid but essential activities and are not considered within the labour force in India. Though this proportion declined from 60 per cent in 2017-18 to 46 per cent in 2021-22 because of the decline in women’s engagement in only domestic chores, in rural areas, one third of women remained engaged in unpaid domestic chores in 2021-22. The Time Use Survey (2019) reveals that on average, women spend over five hours everyday in unpaid domestic services and more than two hours in unpaid caregiving services in rural areas which is substantially more than men. Rural women also spend over seven hours everyday growing crops for the market and household use in 2019.

Despite their crucial role in agriculture, the agriculture census (2015-16) reported that only 14.7 per cent of the operational landholdings were owned by women, reflecting the gender disparity in ownership of landholdings in agriculture. There is also a concentration of operational holdings (57 per cent) by women in the marginal and small holding categories. Owning land can enable women to get access to different agricultural schemes, compensation and relief measures in case of crop loss to sustain their livelihood.

Recently, there has been a shift in the Union government’s expenditure on agriculture and allied sectors as cash-based schemes account for a major proportion of the Union government’s budget and there is greater emphasis on an individual-centric approach. Various schemes, such as the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi (PM-KISAN) and Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY), are initiated by the Union government under the income support and risk management category whose expenditure has increased from 13 per cent in 2015-16 to 73 per cent in 2023-24. Allocations for agriculture in the Union budgets have signalled a high priority for these two schemes, in particular. But the gender-wise beneficiary data highlights that only 15 per cent women farmers received financial support from PMFBY in 2023 and only 25 per cent women farmers received financial benefit under PM-KISAN. Since landowning is the major criterion for getting benefits of these two schemes, many women farmers end up excluded.

The unpaid, unaccounted and underpaid contribution of rural women, not only in agriculture but the overall rural economy, must be counted, along with the inclusion of landless, marginal women farmers in government agricultural schemes to combat gender inequality in rural India.