Women s Work in Indian Agriculture by Agro-Ecologic Zone-Meeting Needs of Landless and Land-Poor Women

This paper examines the roles and needs of two classes of women, landless wage labour and landpoor cultivators, within the context of six agro-ecologic zones in India. The analysis by agro-ecologic zones points to a significant pattern: that the incidence of both female wage labour and women cultivators is positively associated with high productivity (irrigated conditions) in paddy-growing areas and low productivity (rain-fed conditions) in wheat- growing and coarse grain areas. Arguably the most alarming trend is that whereas women's dependence on agricultural wage labour is higher and increasing faster than men's, the demand for female labour has not increased and may even have decreased over the past two decades.