From Invisible Labour to Empowered Farmers: Recognizing Women’s Work in Agriculture
Posted on November 17, 2025
In the past few years, India has gone through a compelling change, which mainly relates to the rural workforce, namely that the proportion of women working in the agriculture sector has increased significantly. Based on the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS 2021-22) data, female workers in India, 62.9 per cent, are engaged in agriculture, this being a percentage that is higher than that of males, whose share is 38.1 per cent (PIB 2023). The increasing feminisation of agriculture is, however, accompanied by an uncomfortable contradiction that most of these women are working without any kind of payment, i.e., as unpaid family helpers. The upsurge of the female labour force has, more often than not, been in the sectors of non-paid or wage work and has been concentrated in family enterprises (mostly agriculture), in which they are given no formal compensation. Data from PLFS and labour studies indicate that the extent of unpaid work by women in agriculture has increased. Recently, it was found that, in 2022-23, the percentage of women engaged in rural agriculture who were self-employed was about 81 per cent, and the number of those who worked without pay was around two-thirds (Down To Earth, 2024).
The proportion of women working as unpaid helpers in family-run businesses has gone up from 9.6 per cent in 2017-18 to 17.7 per cent in 2022-23 (Down To Earth 2024). In rural India, a large portion of women engaged in agricultural work without pay for their families — PLFS 2021-22 data shows that almost half (47.7 per cent) of women working in agriculture are considered unpaid helpers, whereas the figure for men is about 20.2 per cent (CEDA 2023). Similarly, within self-employed women, the unpaid helper group increased from 9.6 per cent in 2017-18 to 17.7 per cent in 2022-23 (Agrawal & Bhattacharya 2024).
A study also points out that almost 75% of rural women workers were engaged in the primary sector and its allied activities during 2021–22, and more than 50% of them were employed as unpaid family helpers (Chakraborthy & Chatterjee, 2023). The figures tell a story that is quite different from what is often assumed and is an issue that is rarely highlighted: the amount of work done does not equate to the quality of work. Although women in agriculture are referred to as “workers,” their reality is frequently one of minimal freedom, low or no wages, and being left out of the coverage of social security schemes.
Why is this happening?
Several interconnected factors sustain the persistence of unpaid agricultural labour for women. One of the key phenomena associated with the reallocation of agricultural labour is the migration of males, which typically leads to women taking over the operational management of farms. As men head towards non-farm jobs, it is women who keep the production going but usually, their contributions are not recognized as paid work, a situation which has been found in families living in areas with high out-migration rates, where this pattern is repeated over and over again.
Norms and stereotypes related to gender roles, especially at the household level, have a significant influence on the invisibility of women’s farm work, as they basically consider it as part of domestic care, which does not deserve any remuneration. According to time-use surveys, women are heavily burdened with the majority of unpaid domestic and care responsibilities, plus their agricultural duties (Deb et al., 2021).
Gender inequalities in agriculture are not only socially constructed, but also legal and institutional frameworks are implicated. For instance, belonging to the head-of-household category is a requirement if a woman wants to be able to get a loan or other forms of support through agricultural schemes, even if she is the one doing the work on the farm. Besides that, labour laws and minimum wage protection do not cover family members who are working without pay on smallholder farms.
One more aspect is that the lack of measurement and recognition continues to be a major problem in the perpetuation of the invisibility of these women. Frequently, the official statistics do not accurately count the number of unpaid helpers or even mistakenly classify them, and besides, any payments to them within the household are not reflected in the formal wage records. Unpaid family helpers in agriculture are often underrecognized in official statistics, and their contributions are frequently invisible in policy and economic assessments. Because household labour is internal and informal, these women’s work is rarely counted as paid employment, reinforcing the systemic neglect of their labour and perpetuating gendered inequalities in agriculture.
Impacts and consequences
The continuation of unpaid agricultural labour by women has significant social and economic impacts. It deepens the divide between the incomes of males and females and keeps them within the poverty cycle, as women who produce a lot of the farms’ output are often given no money in return for their work. Therefore, their personal income levels are low, resulting in them being in a situation of deprivation over and over again. The Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) 2022–23 shows that more than 81% of female workers in the agricultural sector were self-employed, and almost 66% were unpaid family helpers. This is a clear indication that women are prevented from earning to a large extent (Down To Earth, 2025; Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, 2023). Besides, the lack of wages makes it impossible for women to participate in social protection systems, which are closely related to formal or paid employment, for instance, the Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO), maternity benefits, and pension schemes. This is the reason why they are so susceptible to economic or health shocks. Their unpaid work status also leads to a reduction in their authority and power in decision-making in families and communities. The findings of a study carried out in central India (Farnworth et al., 2023) indicate that even if women are the main farm workers, men hold the power of assets, inputs, and income from which the benefits are reaped; that is why women are the ones who do the hard work but are treated as helpers and not as farm managers. Moreover, in the case of unpaid care, agricultural work, and the double burden, severe time poverty, lack of energy, and health risks are the consequences. Doing household chores, taking care of children and the elderly, and working in the field, women are restricted to education, skill development, or paid employment opportunities, thus leading to the perpetuation of gender inequality across generations.
What needs to change: policy pathways
Moving from recognition to remuneration for women’s labour in agriculture requires a multi-pronged strategy. One such measure could be changing the existing systems of measurement and classification to recognize unpaid family helpers in surveys, quantify their hours and tasks so that their contribution is reflected in national accounts and policy frameworks.
Another way might be creating incentives for fair payment, such as making a part of farm subsidies, procurement benefits, or support schemes conditional upon women’s remuneration and promoting cooperatives and FPOs to hire women at equitable wages. Besides, it is advisable to associate land and name records with gender by advocating joint land titles, simplifying documentation, and guaranteeing women’s acknowledged legal status as farmers or labourers; hence, new technology for payments will be accessible to them. Moreover, developments in wage support schemes and gender-sensitive subsidies could be made, for instance, by increasing resources under MGNREGA to recognize women’s agricultural labour.
On the other hand, women’s collectives and producer organisations ought to receive support as a legitimate measure to empower female-led FPOs and cooperatives to dignify women’s work, negotiate better terms, and assure them fair compensation. Another way is social investment in protection and care infrastructure that is in the rural areas, which comprises childcare, water, energy, and health services with the aim of lessening unpaid care burdens and encouraging women’s participation in paid work.
The last thing is social norms and awareness, which can be achieved through community campaigns, schools, and extension services that help change the perception of women’s farm work to be one of productive labour with the right to get recognition and remuneration, not by merely providing support to the household.
Concluding reflection
The rise in women’s participation in agriculture is not only real but also significant. Nevertheless, despite the existence of paid and unpaid work divides, there is still the persistence of an even deeper inequity: those who perform a large portion of farm labor, i.e., women, are at the very least the recipients of remuneration and recognition. In case India is committed to sustainable growth that includes, among others, rural equity and gender justice, then the country cannot help but take into account this lack of balance.
It will not automatically be the case that a sector in agriculture where women’s labour is recognized and valued will come into being. Such a result would necessitate the concerted effort of policymakers to rethink metrics, overhaul the entitlement system, allocate resources for the development of care infrastructure, and influence the social norms. To put it simply, if women farm, then the household eats. On the other hand, if women farm without being paid, the country’s equality deficit gets larger. The time has come when we should no longer be merely counting women as workers but rather moving forward to paying them as rightful contributors to India’s agriculture.
About the Author:
This article was written by Dr. P ALLI
The writer is an Associate Professor at VIT Chennai. Email: alli.p@vit.ac.in.
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