Concept And Context Of New Employment Opportunities For Women In Agriculture

Globalization, liberalization, technological development, infrastructure development and WTO etc. are ‘contexts’, which have the potential to positively influence the quantity and quality of women’s participation in agriculture in India’s North Eastern Region. Women in agriculture in this part of the country, are going to get more and more employments both in the value chain and in newer ‘concepts’ (work avenues) being created. However, in practice, many of these current and would be ‘contexts’ and ‘concepts’ are not and would not be unmixed blessings. In the short-run, some of the changes may bring in miseries to the women folks. However, in the long run, women in this region are going to gain the lion’s share of these ensuing opportunities, because they are ideologically more empowered vis-a vis women in rest of India. Having said this, the fact is also that, this ideological empowerment has not greatly been translated into economic and political empowerment in terms of access to land, assets, credit, information, knowledge etc. Hence, the need of the hour is to promote more such empowerment in the institutional levels. This will brighten their access to new work avenues in agriculture in the near future.