Women make up over 64% of India’s agricultural workforce but operate just 11.72% of farmland.
Limited land, credit, wages and market access continue to disadvantage women farmers.
A new report estimates these gaps could mean ₹1.2–2 lakh crore in annual output losses.
For women working in agriculture, the demands of the job do not end when the working day does. Across rural India, women participate in planting, harvesting, livestock care and other forms of farm work, often while carrying responsibilities at home that remain largely outside the definition of agricultural labour.
Yet much of this work remains poorly recognised, whether because women are recorded as family workers, labourers or dependants rather than as cultivators or landowners. The consequences of this invisibility can be particularly stark for women whose agricultural work takes them into temporary and precarious working conditions.
In Maharashtra’s Beed district, for instance, thousands of women migrate with their families to work as sugarcane cutters. Menstruation has been documented as an additional difficulty during the harvesting season, when physically demanding work, long hours and inadequate sanitation can compound reproductive-health challenges.
Reports over the years have documented cases of women undergoing hysterectomies amid these working conditions. District health data reported in 2025 recorded 115 hysterectomies among female sugarcane workers between January 2024 and May 2025, bringing renewed attention to the reproductive-health challenges faced by women in the industry.
This experience sits within a much larger shift taking place across Indian agriculture. Women now account for roughly 48% of the agricultural workforce, according to Her Harvest 2026, a report by agricultural supply-chain company Arya.ag, while agriculture employs more than 64% of India’s working women.
However, women operate only 11.72% of the country’s farmed area. The report also noted that nearly half of women working in agriculture are classified as unpaid helpers in household enterprises, compared with roughly one in five men.
The gap between women’s participation in agriculture and their access to agricultural assets has consequences beyond ownership records. Land ownership and cultivator status can affect access to institutional credit, government schemes, extension services and markets.
Arya.ag estimates that gender-based inequalities in access to agricultural resources could be costing India between ₹1.2 lakh crore and ₹2 lakh crore in agricultural output every year. The estimate is based on an FAO assessment that closing such inequalities could increase agricultural output by 2.5% to 4%.
In the cotton belt of Vidarbha, tens of thousands of farmer suicides have been recorded over more than two decades, driven by debt, drought and crop failure. The women left behind, who had worked the same fields, often since before sunrise, can discover that grief comes with little formal recognition of the land and assets they helped cultivate.
Earlier, a study of 505 women widowed by farm suicides across Marathwada and Vidarbha found that about 40% had still not secured rights to the land they had farmed with their husbands. Only 35% had secured rights to the family house, years after the men who died were the only ones recorded as farmers.
A Farmer Without The Title
When men leave villages for cities and non-farm jobs, women are increasingly taking on the work of running farms, but the records that determine who gets land, credit and other agricultural support often still leave them out.
Nearly 77% of rural working women are now employed in agriculture, while women’s share of the agricultural workforce has risen from 57% in 2017-18 to more than 64% in 2023-24, according to Arya.ag, citing government and institutional data.
Yet women operate only 11.72% of India’s farmed area.
The contrast captures the central problem highlighted by the report: women are becoming increasingly important to Indian agriculture without gaining a corresponding share of the assets and resources that determine how farming is conducted.
Nearly 47.7% of women working in agriculture are recorded as unpaid helpers on family farms, compared with 20.2% of men, the report said. “Women are not merely helping; they are running farms,” it said.
For women working on family farms, the absence of land ownership can have consequences beyond the title deed. The report described land ownership as the “master key” of Indian farming because it influences who is counted as a farmer and who can access credit, extension services and procurement opportunities.
That creates a gap between the amount of work women perform and the formal control they have over agricultural resources. Women’s share of the agricultural workforce is now more than five times their share of operated farmland, according to the report.
The imbalance also affects earnings. Women in farm work earn about ₹82 for every ₹100 earned by men in agrifood work, with the report citing estimates that women farm workers earn 20% to 30% less for the same work.
Arya.ag said women-run farms are also 24% less productive than men’s farms of the same size, attributing the difference to access to credit and inputs rather than ability. With equal access to resources, yields on women-run farms could rise by 20% to 30%, the report said.
The Cost Is Felt At Home
The consequences extend beyond the farm.
Arya.ag said that when women’s agricultural incomes rise, household incomes often increase by 20% to 30%. Women are also widely estimated to reinvest as much as 90% of their remaining income in food, schooling and healthcare.
That means the money generated by women’s agricultural work can affect both immediate household needs and longer-term resilience, the report said. At the national level, Arya.ag applied the Food and Agriculture Organisation’s estimate of a 2.5% to 4% agricultural output loss associated with gender inequality to India’s agricultural gross value added of ₹48.7 lakh crore.
It estimated that this implied ₹1.2 lakh crore to ₹2 lakh crore in agricultural output forgone each year. The report presents the figure as the economic cost of a system in which women contribute heavily to farming but have less access to the resources that could increase their productivity.
Breaking The Cycle
Arya.ag describes a cycle that can begin when women are not recognised as farmers. Without recognition, they can struggle to obtain formal credit. That can mean fewer inputs and less storage, leaving farmers vulnerable to distress sales when crops are harvested and prices are weak.
The report argued that the cycle can be broken through a combination of recognition, finance, storage, collective organisations and technology. Warehouse receipts, for example, can allow farmers to store grain rather than sell immediately after harvest, while using the stored crop as an asset against which financing can be raised.
Women-led farmer producer organisations, or FPOs, can also provide a route into more organised markets. Technology, meanwhile, does not necessarily require land ownership to be effective. Soil sensors, price information, drones and agricultural advisories can reach women through institutions they run, the report said.
One example cited is Nita Isal of Narivandan FPC in Maharashtra, who became known as “Dronewali Didi” for facilitating drone-based spraying services for farmers in her community. Her work also created an additional source of income for her family.
In Bihar, Suman Kumari helped establish a Smart Farm Centre, training farmers in soil testing and more precise nutrient application. The report said the centre’s work contributed to a 20% reduction in input costs and a 70% reduction in spraying time. However, Outlook India could not independently verify these claims.
Additionally, it also called for collateral-light credit, warehouse receipts and women-held Kisan Credit Card accounts so that finance can follow the crop rather than the title. The report further recommended expanding drones, agricultural advice and market technology through institutions run by women, and building women-led FPOs as permanent market institutions rather than temporary projects.
The report’s findings point to a widening gap between women’s participation in agriculture and their access to the resources that shape farm incomes and decision-making. While women are taking on a larger share of agricultural work, limited ownership of land and weaker access to credit, markets and technology continue to constrain their role as recognised farmers.
