Work and Empowerment: Women and Agriculture in South India

This paper explores the implications of women’s work in agriculture in Telangana, a region in the state of Andhra Pradesh, India. I suggest that higher capital costs for cultivators post-liberalization increased the pressure to contain wage costs in a region where women form the majority of the agricultural wage labour force. Under such conditions, when women perform both own-cultivation as well as agricultural wage work in the fields of others, they face pressure to restrict bargaining for higher wages, contributing to a widening gender wage gap. To the extent that wages shape intra-household bargaining power, the empowering effect of workforce participation for such women would thus be blunted. From available NSS data I provide some preliminary evidence in support of this argument