As agriculture becomes increasingly feminised, women farmers are carrying a heavier workload on their fields, says leading scientist Soumya Swaminathan.
She says, this International Year of the Woman Farmer, we should urge states to truly recognise their labour and resilience by strengthening their rights, access to schemes, and more.
Delivering a lecture at the Villars Institute Summit 2026 recently, she highlighted that while women comprise a majority of the agricultural workforce, they are severely disadvantaged by a lack of legal land ownership and exclusion from institutional credit and government schemes.
Swaminathan, who has been elected Fellow of the Royal Society, the world’s oldest scientific academy in continuous existence, noted that over half of the agricultural workforce was female, but only about 15 per cent of agricultural land was actually registered in women’s names.
“As men increasingly migrate to urban centres for work, rural women are left carrying the heavier operational burden of farming while remaining legally ‘invisible’ in the system. Formal titles are the only way for women to independently access bank loans, agricultural equipment, water rights, and other subsidies,” she asserted.
As chairperson of the MS Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF), Dr Soumya Swaminathan is leading a major advocacy push regarding the feminisation of agriculture. The MSSRF is actively urging state and national governments to enact legislation or policy shifts that legally recognise women as farmers.
This push directly coincides with the United Nations declaration of the International Year of the Woman Farmer, bringing global visibility to the roles women play in agrifood systems.
Swaminathan has consistently argued that empowering women with knowledge and legal rights not only boosts crop yields but also protects natural biodiversity and improves community nutrition.
Agriculture remains the backbone of India’s economy. According to the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS), the sector accounted for 43 per cent of the country’s employment in 2025.
Over the years, farming has become increasingly feminised, with rural women carrying out much of the agricultural work as men move to non-farm jobs in search of other sources of income.
Today, women farmers are estimated to contribute nearly 80 per cent of the labour in rural agriculture, playing a key role in food production and farm livelihoods. However, a lack of identity as farmers limits what they can achieve.
The Maharashtra Government is developing the Women Farmers’ Entitlements Bill, with MSSRF as its lead partner.
According to the United Nations, women farmers are all women working in agrifood systems in different capacities across all segments of value chains, and this includes farmers, producers, peasants, family and smallholder farmers, seasonal labourers, fishers, fish workers, beekeepers, pastoralists, foresters, processors, traders, traditional knowledge holders, women in agricultural sciences, formal and informal workers, and rural entrepreneurs.
“We often picture a man working in a field when we think of a farmer. It is time we change that image. A woman is a famer too. And farming is not just about growing crops. This recognition, this sensitisation, will happen only through policy change. Women farmers today are bearing the double burden of navigating the systemic barriers and the challenges posed by climate change and they deserve all the support,” Swaminathan added.
