Nearly 80% of Indian women engaged in farm activities

Around 80 percent of women in India are engaged in farming activities, a factsheet report, prepared by renowned aid agency Oxfam India, revealed on Wednesday. The factsheet which was released on the eve of World Food Day on Wednesday states that despite women comprising the bulk of farming workforce in the country, they had ironically no land rights in the country. The Oxfam is a rights-based organization that fights poverty and injustice by linking grassroots programming on local, national and global advocacy and policy-making. The agency said that about 170 million women in India who are working in farms and allied activities produce about 60-80 per cent of food and 90 per cent of dairy products but only 13 per cent have property rights. "Ironically, women work about 3,300 hours in a crop season compared with 1, 860 hours logged by men, but the image of a farmer is that of a man. This is because a farmer is defined not by the work done but by who owns the land, it added.