Towards recognising women farmers
Maharashtra’s passage of the Women Farmers’ Empowerment Bill, granting women independent recognition as farmers irrespective of land ownership, brings into focus the structural bias against the female agricultural workforce, highlights the need for a database of women farmers and using it to ensure access to welfare schemes
In 2025, agriculture employed roughly 110 million women and 127 million men (rural, as per the PLFS, Census adjusted), bringing the sector close to gender parity.
Picture a farmer. The image that comes to mind is of a man. But when one looks at who is actually farming, she is increasingly likely to be a woman. This perception-reality mismatch is caused by age-old practices of collecting data, designing policies and defining who a farmer is. It makes millions of women who work on farms, make agricultural decisions and contribute to production nearly invisible. That may, however, finally be beginning to change.
In July 2026, Maharashtra passed the Women Farmers’ Empowerment Bill, granting women independent recognition as farmers irrespective of land ownership, through a Woman Farmer Certificate. This is the first Indian State legislation to give enforceable legal form to the activity-based, land-delinked definition of ‘farmer’ that the National Policy for Farmers set out in 2007 but never operationalised. The Bill arrives nearly two decades after that policy, and 15 years after a comparable law was first proposed at the national level (a lapsed bill introduced in the Rajya Sabha in 2011). It is, in effect, the culmination of three decades of women farmers’ movements backed by civil society organisations.
Text and Context / The Hindu Explains / Agriculture
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