| Course Introduction: |
The Course Gender Dynamics in Agriculture designed and developed with the following objectives.
- To explain Gender roles in Agriculture and allied sectors;
- To discuss gender-specific access, control of resources, knowledge, skills, and decision making in agriculture and allied sectors; and
- To explore the occupational hazards and drudgery reduction mechanism to women in agriculture and allied sectors.
It is six credits worth of course having five blocks with 23 Units. Each Block in this course has dealt with each sectors starting with agriculture in Block one. Block one has five Units starting with exploring gender roles in agriculture, access to resources, services and institutions, gender-specific knowledge and skills, decision making in agriculture and gender occupational hazards and drudgery reduction. The existing patriarchy and gender socialization process expect women to perform specific roles in society and men to perform specific roles. According to Ester Boserup "Both in primitive and in more developed communities, the traditional division of labour within the farm family is usually considered 'natural' in the sense of being obviously and originally imposed by sex difference itself. In fact, an important distinction can be made between two kinds of patterns of subsistence agriculture: One in which food production is taken care of by women, with little help from men, and one where the men produce food with relatively little help from women. As a convenient terminology, I propose to denote these two systems as the male and female systems of farming".
Women, men and other genders perform various roles like productive, reproductive and community roles. The existing studies point out that men perform mostly productive roles and Women perform all three kinds of roles. Women's reproductive role includes bearing children, rearing children, caring for elders, the sick and others in the family and community. The productive roles performed by men and may get cash, kind or recognition. But, the productive, reproductive and community roles performed by women are recognized and valued. As far as agriculture and allied sectors are concerned, women do a productive role as subsistence farming and various economic activities, especially women, are part of the informal economy where they do work for low pay or don't get cash or kind. Most of the time, the work performed by women are not recognised and valued. With the extension of reproductive work, the women perform various community managing roles, including caring for community members, maintaining community assets, and sustainable use of community assets. Women perform all kinds of reproductive work, and it is not valued and recognized.
Work further can be divided into paid and unpaid work. Most of the productive, reproductive and community management work performed by women are unpaid. These two (paid and unpaid) are closely related and interconnected. According to Indira Hirway "The division of total labour force in the household into paid and unpaid work generates the hierarchy within the household that is reflected in the lower status of women in the household as well as in the labour market" It is significant to documents women's role in agriculture activities to recognize and value their work. Thus we designed and developed Course two to explain gender roles in each sector, women's access to resources, services and institutions, Gender-specific knowledge and skills, decision making in agriculture and occupational hazards and drudgery. Like Block one, which dealt with agriculture, Block 2 dealt with livestock. In Block two, we discussed gender roles in livestock, access to resources, institutions and services, gender-specific knowledge and skills, decision making in livestock farming and occupational hazards, and drudgery reduction. Block three dealt with gender and fisheries; Like the first two blocks, the third Block too discussed gender roles, access to resources, services and institutions, gender-specific knowledge and skills, decision making in livestock farming and occupational hazards and drudgery reduction. The fourth Block concentrated on gender and agroforestry, including beekeeping and sericulture. Like the previous three blocks, the fourth blocks discussed gender roles in forestry, access to forest produce, gender-specific knowledge and skills, decision making in sustainable forest management. The final Block dealt with gender issue in the agrarian crisis. In this Block, the issues of agrarian relations of production, contemporary challenges of liberalization, privatization, globalization, and farmers suicide in India are discussed. The author wrote the last Unit, the farmer’s suicide, by collecting various case studies. Learners can assess the depth of the problems of farming communities, including suicide, through these case studies.
Happy Learning
Mita Sinhamahapatra and G.Uma |
