About the  database

Developing Gender database in agriculture is an important objective of Nation Research Centre for Women in Agriculture(NRCWA), Bhubaneswar. This is sought to be achieved by collecting, compiling and synthesizing data from different sources including the published sources and present the same in a structured and systematic way so as to make the data/ information more meaningful, easily accessible to users. Such a database, it is envisaged, would contribute to the conceptual, theoretical and methodological understanding about the subject, apart from catering to the information needs of stakeholders including students, researchers and policy makers. The database depicts the activity and decision profile of women in agriculture in the states of Assam, Andhra Pradesh, Haryana, Punjab, Karnataka, Rajasthan, Himachal Pradesh, Uttrakhand and Maharashtra.

      While talking about gender, it is the role of women in agriculture and allied activities that immediately catches the attention and it is so because of the importance of women in those sectors. Therefore, in order to highlight the status of women and draw relevant inferences about the spatial and domain wise involvement of women, it is but natural to consider, among others, two important aspects i.e., women participation in decision making and their activity profile. 

    The database on Women in Agriculture is the outcome of the efforts from All India Co-coordinated Research Project on Home Science of Indian Council of Agricultural Research. A data book on ‘Women in Agriculture’ was published in the year 2003 that provides a comprehensive account of various aspects of women’s participation in decision-making and activities. The data pertains to  2700 rural women spread over 42 agro-climatic zones of nine states of India. The document serves as a rich source of data on landholding wise participation profile and decision-making profile in areas like farming, post harvest and livestock management. It was really tempting to make use of the available data for developing data base of the Centre with the idea of making available data accessible to a larger audience. Importantly, wherever possible, the available data have been further processed and converted into some derived tables so as to make those data more meaningful and useful. 

Thus, a humble beginning has been made and there is long way to go in terms of content and quality improvement. In order to fulfill this challenging task, the co-operation of all those involved in gender research and development is indeed indispensable. We request interested parties to contribute to database development by sharing their data/ information generated by their own efforts with NRCWA which will be duly acknowledged. NRCWA, on its part, would reciprocate by allowing the partners to share its information for research and development activities. Ultimately, we would like the gender database of the Centre to trigger activities for promoting the women’s interest and addressing gender issues in agriculture.