This chapter highlights the critical contributions of women in agricultural protests, revealing their unique struggles and resilience in the fight for social and economic justice.
Authors
Floriane Bolazzi, Department of Social and Political Studies, University of Milan, Italy.
Kaveri Haritas, Jindal School of Government and Public Policy, O.P. Jindal Global University, Sonipat, Haryana, India.
Isabelle Guérin, French Institute of Pondichéry, India.
Summary
This chapter explores the reasons for the massive involvement of women in the Indian peasant protest of 2020 and 2021. Agriculture has become highly feminised in recent decades and women now play a crucial but invisibilised role in the management of family farms, as wives of farmers, who are now absent because they are engaged in agricultural wage labour, as widows or as agricultural workers.
But women remain largely discriminated against in terms of land ownership, wages and access to the range of government policies and benefits that target farmers. By introducing a more market-friendly agricultural model, the reforms would have further marginalised women. They would also have threatened the food security of farming families, for whom women are the primary caregivers. By engaging in the struggle, women have expressed the dangers of a capitalist and patriarchal agricultural model.
Published in: The Indian farmers’ protest of 2020–2021: Agrarian crisis, dissent and identity, Routledge, London
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