IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ags/aareaj/338511.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Rural non-farm diversification, agricultural feminisation and women’s autonomy in the farm: evidence from India

Author

Listed:
  • Neog, Bhaskar Jyoti
  • Sahoo, Bimal Kishore

Abstract

This study contributes to the literature on the interlinkage between household nonfarm diversification (HND), agricultural feminisation and female autonomy in farming. The study uses unit-level data from the Indian Human Development Survey for the years 2004 - 2005 and 2011 - 2012. The paper employs instrumental variable regression methods to study such interlinkages. The results show HND to be a significant factor contributing to the feminisation of agriculture. The study finds some evidence that the phenomenon is distress driven. Further, greater participation of women in agriculture, as well as women’s access to land rights, significantly contributes to female autonomy in farm decision-making. The results are robust to the use of alternative indicators of agricultural feminisation.

Suggested Citation

  • Neog, Bhaskar Jyoti & Sahoo, Bimal Kishore, 2020. "Rural non-farm diversification, agricultural feminisation and women’s autonomy in the farm: evidence from India," Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society, vol. 64(3), July.
    • Handle: RePEc:ags:aareaj:338511
    DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.338511
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/338511/files/ajar12374.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.22004/ag.econ.338511?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Marcel Fafchamps & Agnes R. Quisumbing, 2003. "Social roles, human capital, and the intrahousehold division of labor: evidence from Pakistan," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 55(1), pages 36-80, January.
    2. Michael P. Murray, 2006. "Avoiding Invalid Instruments and Coping with Weak Instruments," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 20(4), pages 111-132, Fall.
    3. Bernard F. Lentz & David N. Laband, 1990. "Entrepreneurial Success and Occupational Inheritance among Proprietors," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 23(3), pages 563-579, August.
    4. Mu, Ren & van de Walle, Dominique, 2011. "Left behind to farm? Women's labor re-allocation in rural China," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 18(S1), pages 83-97.
    5. Anderson, Siwan & Eswaran, Mukesh, 2009. "What determines female autonomy? Evidence from Bangladesh," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(2), pages 179-191, November.
    6. Jennifer Twyman & Pilar Useche & Carmen Diana Deere, 2015. "Gendered Perceptions of Land Ownership and Agricultural Decision-making in Ecuador: Who Are the Farm Managers?," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 91(3), pages 479-500.
    7. Davis, Benjamin & Winters, Paul & Carletto, Gero & Covarrubias, Katia & Quiñones, Esteban J. & Zezza, Alberto & Stamoulis, Kostas & Azzarri, Carlo & DiGiuseppe, Stefania, 2010. "A Cross-Country Comparison of Rural Income Generating Activities," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 38(1), pages 48-63, January.
    8. Anderson, C. Leigh & Reynolds, Travis W. & Gugerty, Mary Kay, 2017. "Husband and Wife Perspectives on Farm Household Decision-making Authority and Evidence on Intra-household Accord in Rural Tanzania," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 90(C), pages 169-183.
    9. Alan De Brauw, 2010. "Seasonal Migration and Agricultural Production in Vietnam," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 46(1), pages 114-139.
    10. Nitya Rao, 2012. "Male ‘Providers’ and Female ‘Housewives’: A Gendered Co-performance in Rural North India," Development and Change, International Institute of Social Studies, vol. 43(5), pages 1025-1048, September.
    11. Binzel, Christine & Assaad, Ragui, 2011. "Egyptian men working abroad: Labour supply responses by the women left behind," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 18(S1), pages 98-114.
    12. Benjamin Davis & Paul Winters & Thomas Reardon & Kostas Stamoulis, 2009. "Rural nonfarm employment and farming: household‐level linkages," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 40(2), pages 119-123, March.
    13. Barrett, C. B. & Reardon, T. & Webb, P., 2001. "Nonfarm income diversification and household livelihood strategies in rural Africa: concepts, dynamics, and policy implications," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 26(4), pages 315-331, August.
    14. M. Shahe Emran & Forhad Shilpi, 2011. "Intergenerational Occupational Mobility in Rural Economy: Evidence from Nepal and Vietnam," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 46(2), pages 427-458.
    15. Alan de Brauw & Jikun Huang & Linxiu Zhang & Scott Rozelle, 2013. "The Feminisation of Agriculture with Chinese Characteristics," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 49(5), pages 689-704, May.
    16. Mendola, Mariapia & Carletto, Calogero, 2012. "Migration and gender differences in the home labour market: Evidence from Albania," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 19(6), pages 870-880.
    17. Fleur Wouterse, 2019. "The Role of Empowerment in Agricultural Production: Evidence from Rural Households in Niger," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 55(4), pages 565-580, April.
    18. Itishree Pattnaik & Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt & Stewart Lockie & Bill Pritchard, 2018. "The feminization of agriculture or the feminization of agrarian distress? Tracking the trajectory of women in agriculture in India," Journal of the Asia Pacific Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 23(1), pages 138-155, January.
    19. Quisumbing, Agnes R. & Meinzen-Dick, Ruth Suseela & Raney, Terri L. & Croppenstedt, André & Behrman, Julia A. & Peterman, Amber, 2014. "Synopsis of Gender in agriculture: Closing the knowledge gap:," Issue briefs 84, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Bhaskar Jyoti Neog & Bimal Kishore Sahoo, 2020. "Rural non‐farm diversification, agricultural feminisation and women's autonomy in the farm: evidence from India," Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society, vol. 64(3), pages 940-959, July.
    2. Su, Weiliang & Eriksson, Tor & Zhang, Linxiu & Bai, Yunli, 2016. "Off-farm employment and time allocation in on-farm work in rural China from gender perspective," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 34-45.
    3. Zhu, Zhen & Zhou, Jun & Li, Bowei & Shen, Yueqin & Zhang, Yaoqi, 2020. "How feminization of forest management drives households' adoption of technologies: Evidence from non-timber forest products operations in China," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 115(C).
    4. Gröger, André, 2021. "Easy come, easy go? Economic shocks, labor migration and the family left behind," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 128(C).
    5. Khed, Vijayalaxmi D. & Krishna, Vijesh V., 2023. "Agency and time poverty: Linking decision-making powers and leisure time of male and female farmers of Central India," World Development Perspectives, Elsevier, vol. 29(C).
    6. de Brauw, Alan & Kramer, Berber & Murphy, Mike, 2021. "Migration, labor and women’s empowerment: Evidence from an agricultural value chain in Bangladesh," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 142(C).
    7. Sharma, Govinda Prasad & Pandit, Ram & White, Ben & Polyakov, Maksym, 2015. "The Income Diversification Strategies of Smallholder Coffee Producers in Nepal," Working Papers 207693, University of Western Australia, School of Agricultural and Resource Economics.
    8. Govinda P. Sharma & Ram Pandit & Ben White & Maksym Polyakov, 2020. "The income diversification strategies of smallholders in the hills of Nepal," Development Policy Review, Overseas Development Institute, vol. 38(6), pages 804-825, November.
    9. Phanwin Yokying & Sumeet Saksena & Jefferson Fox, 2023. "Impacts of migration on time allocation of those who remain at home in rural Nepal," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 35(7), pages 2067-2106, October.
    10. Phadera, Lokendra, 2016. "International Migration and its Effect on Labor Supply of the Left-Behind Household Members: Evidence from Nepal," 2016 Annual Meeting, July 31-August 2, Boston, Massachusetts 235968, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    11. Benjamin Davis & Leslie Lipper & Paul Winters, 2022. "Do not transform food systems on the backs of the rural poor," Food Security: The Science, Sociology and Economics of Food Production and Access to Food, Springer;The International Society for Plant Pathology, vol. 14(3), pages 729-740, June.
    12. Panu Poutvaara & Maximilian Schwefer, 2018. "Husbands’ and wives’ diverging perceptions on who decides," ifo Working Paper Series 279, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich.
    13. Qanti, Sara Ratna & Peralta, Alexandra & Zeng, Di, 2021. "Social Norms and Perception on Women's Participation in Agricultural Decisions: The Case of West Java, Indonesia," 2021 Conference, August 17-31, 2021, Virtual 314984, International Association of Agricultural Economists.
    14. Murard, Elie, 2019. "The Impact of Migration on Family Left Behind: Estimation in Presence of Intra-Household Selection of Migrants," IZA Discussion Papers 12094, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    15. Vimefall, Elin, 2015. "Income diversification among female-headed farming households," Working Papers 2015:11, Örebro University, School of Business.
    16. Benjamin Davis & Leslie Lipper & Paul Winters, 2022. "IFAD Research Series 70: Do not transform food systems on the backs of the rural poor," IFAD Research Series 320710, International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD).
    17. Murard, Elie, 2016. "Consumption and Leisure: The Welfare Impact of Migration on Family Left Behind," IZA Discussion Papers 10305, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    18. de Brauw, Alan, 2018. "Rural-urban migration and implications for rural production," Bio-based and Applied Economics Journal, Italian Association of Agricultural and Applied Economics (AIEAA), vol. 6(3), March.
    19. Bocci, Corinne & Mishra, Khushbu, 2021. "Forest power: The impact of community forest management on female empowerment," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 187(C).
    20. Almeida, Alexandre N. & Bravo-Ureta, Boris E., 2019. "Agricultural productivity, shadow wages and off-farm labor decisions in Nicaragua," Economic Systems, Elsevier, vol. 43(1), pages 99-110.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Labor and Human Capital;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ags:aareaj:338511. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: AgEcon Search (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aaresea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.