When the word “farmer” is spoken, what image comes to mind? For most people, it is a man holding a plough, gazing hopefully at the sky. This image is so deeply ingrained that even when a woman works tirelessly in the fields from dawn to dusk, she is rarely called a farmer.
She sows seeds, removes weeds, harvests crops, picks cotton, tends livestock, stores grain, and manages farms, yet her identity remains confined to that of a “labourer” or a “helper.” This is not merely a social oversight; it is a long-standing injustice whose consequences extend far beyond individual lives and threaten the foundations of food security itself.
Anthropologists have long argued that the origins of agriculture are closely linked to women’s knowledge and labour. Thousands of years ago, women identified, preserved, cultivated, and improved seeds and crops, laying the foundations of settled agricultural civilisation. Today, millions of women across India continue that legacy. Yet despite their immense contribution, they remain largely invisible within the agricultural system.
Women constitute the backbone of rural agriculture. Nearly 80 percent of rural women are engaged in agricultural activities, performing around 70 percent of farm-related tasks. Their contribution to crop production is estimated at 75 percent and rises to nearly 95 percent in livestock rearing and fisheries. According to the Periodic Labour Force Survey 2024, women now account for more than 42 percent of India’s agricultural workforce, up from just 24.8 percent in 2017. In less than a decade, the number of women working in agriculture has nearly doubled.
Yet this growing participation has not translated into recognition. While responsibilities have increased, rights and visibility have remained elusive. Only about 12.8 percent of agricultural land in India is owned by women. Nearly half of all women working in agriculture receive no remuneration for their labour. Over the last eight years, the number of women engaged in unpaid agricultural work has risen dramatically from 2.36 crore to 5.91 crore. This is not merely an alarming statistic; it is a national disgrace.
The situation in Maharashtra is particularly striking. Nearly 88.5 percent of rural women in the state are engaged in agriculture, the highest proportion in the country. In practical terms, almost every rural woman contributes to agricultural production, yet the overwhelming majority own no agricultural land.
Research by the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), conducted across nine states, found that women perform nearly three-fourths of all agricultural operations, from sowing and weeding to harvesting, livestock care, grain processing, and seed preservation. Yet they own less than 14 percent of agricultural land. According to the Agricultural Census 2015–16, women held only 13.87 percent of operational landholdings. A decade later, little has changed. Governments have announced policies, delivered speeches, and launched schemes, but ownership rights remain largely out of women’s reach.
Even Telangana, often cited as a relatively progressive state in this regard, records female ownership of only 21.5 percent of agricultural land. In much of western, central, and eastern India, the proportion remains below 13 percent.
The consequences of landlessness are severe. Without land ownership, women lack access to the 7/12 land record, the crucial document through which farmers establish ownership and eligibility for benefits. Without it, government schemes, institutional credit, crop insurance, and many forms of agricultural support remain inaccessible.
This exclusion is reflected in the implementation of PM-KISAN. Of the 9.35 crore beneficiaries registered under the scheme, only around 2.15 crore are women. In effect, only one in five beneficiaries is female. Crop insurance requires proof of land ownership. Bank loans require land records. Government subsidies require formal registration. Women are effectively excluded at the very first step.
The wage gap further compounds these inequalities. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), women agricultural workers earn only 78 paise for every rupee earned by men. In many parts of India, women agricultural labourers receive wages of barely ₹200 a day. Whether enduring scorching summer heat, standing knee-deep in monsoon mud, or working through freezing winter mornings, women remain indispensable to agriculture, yet their labour continues to be undervalued.
Even among the small minority of women who own land, only about half receive direct income from farming. For the rest, ownership exists largely on paper while economic control remains elsewhere.
Social anthropologist A.R. Vasavi has highlighted the deeply gendered division of labour in Indian agriculture. Men are generally associated with activities such as ploughing, mechanised sowing, and spraying, while women undertake labour-intensive tasks such as transplanting, weeding, harvesting, and livestock management. Since Independence, agricultural mechanisation has largely focused on reducing male labour through tractors, irrigation systems, and machinery. Comparatively little innovation has targeted the tasks predominantly performed by women. Their work remains labour-intensive because it has historically been regarded as secondary and therefore undeserving of technological investment.
Soma K.P., founder of the Mahila Kisan Adhikar Manch (MAKAAM), points to another critical reality. As increasing numbers of men migrate to cities for work, women often assume full responsibility for managing farms. Yet ownership rights and decision-making authority frequently remain with the absent male members of the household. Women cultivate the land, manage production, and sustain families, but are still not recognised as farmers.
When crops fail, drought strikes, or compensation is announced, benefits are often routed to men whose names appear on land records, even if they no longer live in the village. Widows who continue farming after the death of their husbands face similar barriers. How long can such exclusion be justified?
The burden borne by women extends beyond the fields. Women spend an average of 14 hours a day performing a combination of agricultural, household, and care work. During peak agricultural seasons, this can rise to 16 hours. Yet much of this labour remains invisible in economic calculations. Globally, unpaid domestic work performed by women contributes trillions of dollars in economic value, but receives neither wages nor recognition. Because women’s agricultural labour is deeply intertwined with household responsibilities and caregiving, surveys often fail to capture its full extent, resulting in systematic underestimation of their contribution.
Climate change is adding yet another layer of vulnerability. Women-led farming households suffer disproportionately from heat stress, droughts, and floods. Estimates suggest annual losses of $37 billion from heat-related impacts and $16 billion from flooding. Studies indicate that for every one-degree Celsius increase in temperature, the incomes of women-led households decline far more sharply than those of male-led households.
Research among paddy farmers in Kerala’s Palakkad district has documented rising incidences of skin diseases, heat stress, and water-borne illnesses among women agricultural workers. As climate risks intensify, women often have the least access to protective equipment, insurance coverage, extension services, and adaptation technologies. The World Bank estimates that women farmers’ productivity is 20 to 30 percent lower than men’s, not because of differences in ability, but because women face systematic barriers in accessing irrigation, technology, information, and institutional support.
India’s legal framework has attempted to address some of these inequalities. The Hindu Succession (Amendment) Act, 2005 granted daughters equal rights in ancestral property. Yet legal rights do not automatically translate into social realities. Family pressures, social norms, and fears of land fragmentation continue to discourage women from claiming their inheritance. Many voluntarily relinquish their rights, while others are pressured into doing so. Even when land is registered in women’s names, it is often smaller in size and of poorer quality than land owned by men.
Recognising these challenges, Prof. M.S. Swaminathan introduced the Women Farmers’ Rights Bill in the Rajya Sabha in 2012, proposing measures such as the issuance of Women Farmer Certificates. The bill, however, failed to become law. For years, organisations such as MAKAAM and the Gorakhpur Environmental Action Group have advocated for formal recognition of women farmers, but policymakers have largely ignored their demands.
The global community is now beginning to acknowledge the urgency of this issue. The United Nations has declared 2026 the International Year of Women Farmers. FAO Chief Economist Maximo Torero has warned that progress toward women’s empowerment in agriculture has stalled and that the cost of inaction is enormous. The initiative focuses on four key pillars: land ownership, access to credit, technology, and training.
Against this backdrop, Maharashtra has offered a potentially transformative model. Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis has announced that the Maharashtra Women Farmer Empowerment Bill, 2026 will be introduced during the monsoon session of the state legislature. The proposed legislation seeks to grant women legal recognition as independent farmers and improve their access to credit, technology, markets, and government services.
Importantly, the bill is expected to include landless women cultivators, tenant farmers, agricultural labourers, livestock keepers, and migrant agricultural workers. If implemented effectively, it could become a landmark reform. For the first time, women may be recognised as farmers even without possessing a 7/12 land record. Such recognition would open the door to institutional credit, insurance coverage, water rights, and agricultural support services.
For women in households affected by agrarian distress and farmer suicides, such recognition is not simply a matter of dignity. It is a matter of survival.
Yet legislation alone will not solve the problem. The distance between law and implementation remains one of India’s greatest governance challenges. Women’s names must appear in land records. Gram panchayats, banks, agricultural departments, and local institutions must actively facilitate their inclusion.
At the heart of this issue lies a deeply entrenched belief that women’s labour is merely supplementary while men perform the “real” farming. This assumption is fundamentally flawed. The mother transplanting rice seedlings, the sister harvesting crops, the wife managing livestock and farm operations—each is a farmer in her own right.
The struggle for women farmers is not simply about land titles, welfare schemes, or legal recognition. It is about acknowledging a truth that has been ignored for generations: Indian agriculture stands on the labour of women. Until that labour is recognised, rewarded, and protected, the promise of agricultural justice will remain incomplete.
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