Action Research for Alternative Development, a Study of Women Agricultural and Subsistence Workers in Axom

grantor: University of TorontoAlthough farming is traditionally considered to be a male activity, the role of women has never been limited to the household and the family. In rural areas, women engage in a wide variety of economic activities, including the construction of housing, land cultivation, wage labor, harvesting, food storage and marketing, depending on culture, traditions, geographic locations, changing economic structures, and other factors. In my study, I attempt to capture, as far as possible, the ignored aspects of women's lives--their work and contribution to home and society in Axmon, a major rice growing region of India. This study, based on the methodological principles of Feminist, Action and Participatory research, is marked as unusual by virtue of the researcher's subject-position as a woman, and a native of the Axomiya community analyzed in the study. In Axom, as in many rural regions, the processes of agricultural development have proletarianized rural women, drawing them into wage labor in commercial agriculture when their households lose access to land, undermining and often destroying their self-sufficiency, and resulting in the overall deterioration in quality of their lives. The thesis suggests an alternative approach where development is not just about economic growth, but an overall improvement, not just in material conditions, but also social and cultural conditions for the vast majority of the people. This means equality for women; it means political freedoms, it means the rights of people to develop and express their own culture, to use their language, to celebrate their own religion.Ph.D