Towards Recognising Women Farmers

UPSC Syllabus: Gs Paper 3- Land reforms in India.

Introduction

Women are playing a growing role in Indian agriculture, but their contribution is often not matched by formal recognition as farmers. Since farmer identity is largely linked to land records, women who cultivate family or other land without ownership rights can remain outside official databases and agricultural schemes. This creates a gap between who actually farms and who is recognised as a farmer.

Current Status of Women Farmers in India

1. Rising participation in agriculture: Agriculture employed around 110 million women and 127 million men in 2025, bringing women’s participation close to gender parity.
2. Feminisation of agriculture: Women’s agricultural workforce has more than doubled since 2017-18, partly because men are moving from farming towards non-farm employment.
3. Growing share of rural women workers: Nearly three-fourths of rural women workers are now engaged in agriculture, compared with less than half of rural men.
4. High burden of unpaid work: More than 41% of female agricultural workers were unpaid in 2025, compared with 20% of male agricultural workers.
5. Limited independent work status: Nearly 63% of men were own-account workers, compared with only 39% of women, showing women’s greater dependence on family farming.
6. Low ownership of agricultural land: Women held only about 14% of operational agricultural land holdings according to the 2015-16 Agricultural Census, despite their growing farming role.
7. Maharashtra’s recognition gap: In Maharashtra, 82% of rural female workers were engaged in agriculture against 58% of rural men, while women held only 15.5% of operational farmland.

Major Concerns Related to Women Farmers in India

1. Land-linked access to benefits: Dependence on land titles restricts women’s access to credit, crop insurance, subsidies, technology, extension services and price-support mechanisms, despite their actual farming contribution.
2. Limited access to government schemes: Land-linked identification prevents many women farmers from accessing credit, subsidies, technology, extension services and other agricultural opportunities.
3. Unequal access to PM-KISAN: Women accounted for only 23% of PM-KISAN beneficiaries, even though women form a much larger share of agricultural workers.
4. State-level differences in recognition: Meghalaya had women accounting for 70% of beneficiaries and Kerala 44%, showing better outcomes where alternative recognition mechanisms exist.
5. Structural role of social institutions: Customary tenure and matrilineal systems in some northeastern States, along with Kerala’s collective farming, improve women’s access to agricultural resources.
6. Land ownership affects economic security: Without titles, women face weaker access to institutional credit, crop insurance and price-support mechanisms, regardless of their actual farming contribution.
7. Recognition does not guarantee ownership: A farmer certificate can identify a woman as a farmer, but it does not automatically provide inheritance, mortgage, sale or tenure rights.

Initiatives to Recognise and Empower Women Farmers

1. International attention in 2026: The United Nations’ International Year of the Woman Farmer in 2026 has increased policy attention towards women’s contribution and rights in agriculture.
2. National Policy for Farmers, 2007: The policy adopted an activity-based and land-delinked definition of farmer, but this approach was not operationalised for nearly two decades.
3. Women Farmers’ Entitlements Bill: The Women Farmers’ Entitlements Bill, 2011, introduced by M.S. Swaminathan in the Rajya Sabha in 2012, lapsed in 2013 but kept women farmers’ rights in the national policy debate.
4. Kerala’s collective farming model: Kudumbashree enables women to participate in group farming, creating an alternative pathway for agricultural participation beyond individual land ownership.
5. Odisha’s KALIA support: The KALIA scheme has reached landless and sharecropper women, showing how agricultural support can extend beyond formal land ownership.
6. Uttarakhand’s co-ownership reform: A 2021 amendment made mandatory co-ownership of ancestral land for wives, strengthening women’s formal position over agricultural property.
7. Maharashtra Women Farmers Empowerment Act, 2026

• Independent farmer identity: The Act recognises women engaged in farming or allied activities for at least one season irrespective of land ownership, through a Woman Farmer Certificate.
• Inclusive definition of farmer: It covers landless cultivators, tenant farmers, sharecroppers, agricultural labourers, livestock rearers and other allied agricultural workers, expanding recognition beyond landowners.
• Institutional mechanism: Women can seek recognition through Gram Panchayats or Nagar Panchayats, while dedicated assistance officers at the Taluka and District levels support certification and access to agricultural services.

Way Forward

1. Build a standardised national framework: States should develop common definitions, certification procedures and databases so women farmers can be identified consistently across administrative systems.
2. Integrate farmer identity with digital systems: Woman Farmer Certificates should connect with Agri Stack and Farmer IDs to integrate women into the wider agricultural digital ecosystem.
3. Improve database coordination: New women farmer databases should connect with existing agricultural databases while preventing duplication, exclusion and repeated registration.
4. Strengthen local identification: Self-registration and Gram Sabha identification should be supported by sustained information campaigns so that landless and title-less women are not missed.
5. Link recognition with actual benefits: Certification should directly improve access to credit, insurance, subsidies, technology, extension services and agricultural schemes, rather than remain an administrative identity.
6. Strengthen land and inheritance rights: Recognition should be followed by dual-name land titling and stronger tenure security, building on the co-ownership approach adopted by Uttarakhand.
7. Make mechanisation gender-responsive: Agricultural mechanisation should consider the women increasingly performing farm work rather than being designed around a different labour force.
8. Build administrative capacity: State revenue systems need stronger implementation mechanisms so that legal recognition can gradually become secure and enforceable tenure rights.

Conclusion

Women’s growing role in Indian agriculture requires a shift from recognising only landowners to recognising actual cultivators. Maharashtra’s reform provides this identity, but lasting empowerment requires linking recognition with land rights, credit, technology, welfare and decision-making power. The long-term goal should be to make women not only visible as farmers, but equal holders of agricultural resources.

Question for practice:

Examine the need to recognise and empower women farmers in India and the measures required to bridge the gap between agricultural participation and ownership.

Source: The Hindu ; Downtoearth