Empowering Women through Agriculture

Empowerment of women would mean equipping women to be economically independent and personally self-reliant with a positive self-esteem to enable them to face any difficult situation. Moreover, they should be able to contribute to the development activities of the country. For empowering women economically, we need to enlarge her choices and access to various opportunities and also build her capacity for taking up successfully income generating activities and compete favourably in the market. Women's role in agriculture is significant as more than 80 per cent of the economically active women are engaged in agriculture and allied activities. This trend still continues. It is fact that women grow half of the world's food but own hardly any land. The need of empowering women for rural development can hardly be under-estimated. Rural women should be empowered in all respects. That is why it requires a specific study to know the status of rural women at macro level. Women's share in various segments during census might be showing a low degree participation, however, in practice, women hold substantial share in the work force of various sectors viz. 90 per cent in informal sector, 70 per cent in agriculture sector, 35.33 per cent in allied sector, 46.1 per cent in the khadi village industries, 65.5 per cent in handloom and sericulture.