Innovations and opportunities for women at the village level

President of India Calls for Innovations and Opportunities to make Women Lives Meaningful : Agriculture Minister Stresses on Assertive Interventions to Ensure Women’s Access to Land Holdings
President of India Smt. Pratibha Devising Patil has called for innovations and opportunities for women at the village level to make their lives healthy, satisfying and meaningful. Addressing the Valedictory Function of Global Conference on Women in Agriculture here today she said, “Agriculture can be a primary driver of the agenda of the empowerment of women. Globally, of the economically active population in agriculture about 43 percent are women. In India, 60 percent of farming operations are performed by women. Moreover, women contribute enormously to allied activities of agriculture like animal husbandry and fisheries. Besides, women shoulder the major burden of household work. This amounts to stressful work conditions and drudgery. We need to think of innovations and opportunities at the village level that will not only meet the multiple needs of women and their families, but also make their lives healthy, satisfying and meaningful.”

President said that despite, many reforms and gender focused policies, both at the macro and micro levels, benefits have not fully trickled down. There is need for greater gender sensitivity during programme development, implementation and monitoring. She said “Women have a sizeable presence in every stage of food production. We must work towards models for entrepreneurship development among women. A strict sectoral approach to agriculture will not be sufficient, and there should be greater integration with other sectors of the economy. Industry and the services sector must reach out to develop linkages with agriculture for end-to-end operations, from the sowing stage to the selling of produce, including value addition. Farmers can be agri-preneurs who interact with industry to work out win-win options”.

Addressing the Conference, Minister of Agriculture and Food Processing Industries, Shri Sharad Pawar pointed out that gender analysis of data collected by various agencies confirms the increasing participation of women in agriculture. He said “The studies have also indicated major contribution of women in various farm activities like transplanting and harvesting, post harvest activities like threshing, drying etc and livestock management. However, despite their integral role in agriculture it is indeed disheartening to note that only 11 per cent women have access to land holdings, that too, mostly as small and marginal farmers. This is true not only in India but is a common feature in many of the developing countries. In my opinion, assertive interventions by the various Governments are required to ensure that more and more women get access to the land holdings.”

The Agriculture Minister informed the Conference that his Ministry has exclusive programmes for gender mainstreaming, in addition to other programmes that aim at the farming community at large without any gender discrimination. He said “One of the goals in strengthening farming community at large is to include all human and gender dimensions in the public policies and programmes. I am proud to say that we did some pioneering work by establishing a Research Institute for Women in Agriculture in 1996, under ICAR at Bhubaneswar. This has enabled us with high level policy initiatives in this sector. Further, the Gender Resource Centre of the Ministry of Agriculture established in 2005-06 is the focal point for convergence of all issues related to women in agriculture and provides support for training, capacity building, research, impact on programmes and activities related to women. The International Cooperation arrangements under the Ministry of Agriculture foster mutually beneficial partnership with other countries of the world and India and contribute to the World Food Programme. The Country Programme 2008-2012 is under operation which aims at reducing hunger and malnutrition of women and children”.

About research on gender issues, Shri Pawar said “The ICAR has already integrated the women component within the National Agricultural Research System. The Agricultural Universities and the Krishi Vigyan Kendras under the NARS are actively engaged in gender mainstreaming in education and frontline extension programmes which will provide a great potential for widening the arena for women in agriculture. The research efforts at the ICAR Institutes have focused on relieving women’s drudgery in agriculture by providing time and labour saving tools. Vocational trainings are also being conducted, to impart skills to undertake different vocations. In extension activities the women is now the centre point and activities are being planned keeping her in view. I am sure these efforts will change the way agriculture is practiced in India”.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog