Women participation in all activities is related to jhumming/terrace cultivation and household activities. Jhum-women continue
to be poorly skilled, low paid and prone to exploitation. Women are left out of many formal training programmes and excluded from coverage of extension services, thereby relegating them to secondary positions in
agricultural work, in families, Jhum fields and the community. In many cases, landless women get left out of training programmes. There must be an increased focus on landless women, so as to include them in various technical and other training activities. There must be a reorientation of schemes targeted for the poor, towards more long term inputs and services.
Interventions that reduce the work of women both at home and in the wetland agriculture have been developed and promoted in some areas. These include paddy threshers, winnowers, harvesting tools, parboiling units, maize shellers. To save time in fetching water and collecting fuel wood and fodder, dig a well in the centre of the village, improving manual transport aids (handcarts), improving cooking stoves, increasing bio-mass production to meet fuel needs, and developing mechanisms for its sharing all helps in saving a lot of time or releasing a lot of time that can be devoted to other income generation activities. Measures should be taken to ensure benefits of all these to agrarian women. Capacity building in this area should be a priority for staff training.
Availability of potable water through pipelines and availability of energy for fuel purposes through biogas technology, improved
technologies for drawing water and shift from traditional chulhas, access to pucca housing with drainage and sewage facilities etc. could reduce drudgery in the household activities that will ultimately result in increased farm productivity of women. Hence, improved technologies in the domain of household activities should be made available through appropriate policy measures.
Training programmes, based on needs identified by and for women, should be organised at the doorstep of agrarian women. These may include:
1. Technology transfer to women in all aspects of farming and farm management. Grassroots women farmers must be trained in various fields, including terrace farming technologies, animal husbandry, forestry, sustainable natural resource management, enterprise development, financial management, and leadership development.
2. Training in pre and post harvest technologies; storage, preservation, packaging and processing and marketing.
3. Skills of resource management including organic farming
4. Training programmes organised by Agricultural Universities that provide admission regardless of age, sex and educational qualifications.
5. Improving women’s access to agricultural technology through technical training and by designing women friendly agricultural technology.
6. Awareness generation on legal rights and land ownership titles.
7. Strengthening backward and forward linkages of the agricultural sector with non-agricultural sectors in order to provide gainful employment to women workforce. Promoting agro-based industries owned and managed by women on cooperative basis can achieve this.
8. Training in nursery raising, horticulture crop cultivation, new techniques in coarse cereals production, seed support program, storage techniques, manure preparation, bio diversity conservation, etc.
to be poorly skilled, low paid and prone to exploitation. Women are left out of many formal training programmes and excluded from coverage of extension services, thereby relegating them to secondary positions in agricultural work, in families, Jhum fields and the community. In many cases, landless women get left out of training programmes. There must be an increased focus on landless women, so as to include them in various technical and other training activities. There must be a reorientation of schemes targeted for the poor, towards more long term inputs and services.
Interventions that reduce the work of women both at home and in the wetland agriculture have been developed and promoted in some areas. These include paddy threshers, winnowers, harvesting tools, parboiling units, maize shellers. To save time in fetching water and collecting fuel wood and fodder, dig a well in the centre of the village, improving manual transport aids (handcarts), improving cooking stoves, increasing bio-mass production to meet fuel needs, and developing mechanisms for its sharing all helps in saving a lot of time or releasing a lot of time that can be devoted to other income generation activities. Measures should be taken to ensure benefits of all these to agrarian women. Capacity building in this area should be a priority for staff training.
Availability of potable water through pipelines and availability of energy for fuel purposes through biogas technology, improved technologies for drawing water and shift from traditional chulhas, access to pucca housing with drainage and sewage facilities etc. could reduce drudgery in the household activities that will ultimately result in increased farm productivity of women. Hence, improved technologies in the domain of household activities should be made available through appropriate policy measures.