Answer:

The gendered division of labour under the pervasive influence of patriarchy has traditionally ensured that women are restricted to household work which is easily passed off as unpaid domestic labour. However the invisible hand of patriarchy is not only at work within the household but also in cases where women manage to gain an entry into the labour market.

The participation of women in agriculture & thus outside the traditional domain of domestic work has been in the backdrop of agrarian distress in agriculture which forced the male members of families to move out of rural-agriculture - low wages sector into the relatively better paying jobs in the informal sector in urban economies. It is believed that this phenomenon has been induced by casualization of work, unprofitable crop production and distress migration. Migration has been noticed to other rural areas, to urban slums and to highly labour-exploitative sectors of the economy such as construction.

This trend in the agriculture sector was most visible during 1999-2005 period in India marked by declining agriculture growth rates which saw a distress migration of male members to relatively better paying jobs either in the urban informal economy or the agriculturally prosperous states and “distress employment” of 17 million females in this sector.

This phenomenon of increased participation of women workforce in the agriculture sector was termed as feminization of agriculture which itself was a manifestation of feminization of poverty- the fact that in a market economy functioning under a patriarchal mind set females often find themselves cornered into relatively lesser paying jobs with minimal rights, no job security, sexual harassment at workplace & a gender insensitive policy framework which has failed to take up the issue of capacity building of female farmers on a priority basis.

For example: Women employed as wage labour receive lower wage than men do. Even when women are categorised as cultivators, their ownership and control over resources such as land, livestock, farm machinery, and transport equipment are limited. In addition, their access to credit, technology and market information is highly restricted. Their opportunities for education, skill formation and of shifting to better paid work are also narrow. Disadvantages experienced by women become apparent once women’s work comes out into the open, as in the case of female wage labour and women-headed households. Female wage labourers are the lowest paid in the economy. The women-headed households in rural areas are seen in the lowest income class. Hence, the major implication of feminisation of agriculture is the increasing burden of work on them and lower compensation.

Therefore, it is evident from above illustration that increase in female participation in agriculture was thus driven by the need to supplement declining family income (or rather male income) termed as “distress employment” & not by any desire to give them an equal status either in the formal economy or within the household with the result that females worked on wages that their male counterparts found to be below subsistence level in the first place.

Feminization being an unintended consequence of the low agricultural growth did not lead to the women empowerment in true sense. Moreover, the limited increase in bargaining power of rural women within family fuelled by participation in formal economy itself was short lived. This is exemplified by the fact that women labour force participation in rural areas declined again in 2005-2009 period which was marked by relatively better agricultural growth rates & increasing wages as a result of positive influence of MGNREGA &Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana (RKVY), a phenomenon which has been termed as defeminisation of agriculture leading to withdrawal of 19 million females from this sector during this period

Thus while increasing labour force participation of women definitely carries the potential of uplifting their position within the family & society, no sustainable gains can be made unless the gendered division of labour is frontally attacked by gender sensitive policies of the state which actively support women employment. Moreover, the nexus between market forces & patriarchy will have to be broken in the first place for which the state & civil society will have to play a vibrant role.