Speaking at the Meeting of the Consultative Committee on “Women in Agriculture”, he expressed that rural women play a pivotal role in the entire gamut of agricultural operations ranging from land preparation to post-harvesting operations. He said, “Their access to productive assets like seed, water, credit, subsidy needs to be enhanced. Women are often not recognized as farmers for want of ownership of land and are not considered as beneficiaries under various government programmes / services. Due to wage differentials between men and women in some parts of the country, the situation gets further aggravated.”
He elaborated on the steps taken by the Ministry of Agriculture to improve the lot of women farmers and said, “Currently, there are number of schemes being implemented by the Ministry of Agriculture, wherein there is a provision for women-specific activities. These include Gramin Bhandaran Yojana, Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana, ATMA Scheme, National Food Security Mission National Horticulture Mission etc.”
Shri Pawar stated that various Ministries in the Government have been working towards empowering women farmers and efforts are being to bring about convergence and synergy. Developing gender disaggregated data and gender budgeting are other key activities which have been taken up to bridge gender inequalities.
The meeting was attended by Ministers of State for Agriculture and FPI, Shri Charan Das Mahant and Shri Tariq Anwar and other members of Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha. The members who attended the meeting were: S/Shri A.Ganeshamurthi, Sharief-ud-din Sharif, Dhruva Narayana Rangaswamy, M. Krishnaswamy, K. Sugumar, K.P. Dhanapalan, Gobinda Chandra Naskar, Sardar Sher Singh Ghubaya, Kunvarjibhai Bavalia, Prof. M.S. Swaminathan, Dr. K.P. Ramalingam, Smt. Mohsina Kidwai, Renubala Pradhan and special invitee Smt. Santosh Chowdhary.
