IMPACT OF WTO ON WOMEN IN AGRICULTURE

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Rural Indian women are extensively involved in agricultural activities. However the nature and extent of their involvement differs with the variations in agro-production systems. The mode of female participation in agricultural production varies with the land-owning status of farm household. Their roles range from managers to landless labourers. In all farm production, women's average contribution is estimated at 55% to 66% of the total labour with percentages, much higher in certain regions. In the Indian Himalayas a pair of bullocks works 1064 hours, a man 1212 hours and a woman 3485 hours in a year on one hectare farm, a figure that illustrates women's significant contribution to agricultural production.

The Impact of WTO rules and policies of trade liberalization in the agriculture sector on women is distinctive for four reasons.

Firstly, women have been the primary seed keepers, processors. They have been the both experts and producers to food, from seed to the kitchen.

WTO impacts women's expertise and productive functions throughout the food chain. The Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs) agrement impacts women's knowledge and control over seed.

The Agreement on Agriculture impacts women's livelihood and income security, and also has secondary impacts in terms of increased violence against women. The Sanitary and Phyto Sanitary a-greement has a direct impact on women's expertise and economic role in agro processing.

Secondly, as globalisation shifts agriculture to capital intensive, chemical intensive system, women bear disproportionate costs of both displacement and health hazards.

Thirdly, women carry the heavier work burden in food production, and because of gender discrimination get lower returns for their work. When WTO destroys rural livelihood, it is women who lose the most. When WTO rules allow dumping which leads to decline in prices of farm products, it is women already low incomes, which go down further.

Fourthly, their position vis-a-vis WTO is also more vulnerable because as the livelihood and incomes of farmers in general, and women agriculturists in particular are eroded, they are displaced from productive roles, and their status is further devalued, while the patriarchal power of those who control assets and benefit from asset transfer due to globalisation is increased, other social processes are triggered which result in increased violence against women.

The violence associated with displacement, devaluation and disempowerment takes the form of intensive violence, increasing incidences of rape, the epidemic of female foeticide, and growth in trafficking of women. Women also bear the ultimate burden of farm suicides, since they are left to look after their households without assets but with the burden of indebtedness.

Over the period 1994-2004, the drive for market liberalization and globalisation has severely impinged on the rural household economies. The traditional mode of agricultural practices has been obliterated.

The Green Revolution had set in the process of replacing of traditional farming knowledge and practices of seed saving. The recent economic system giving a free hand to MNCs in agriculture sector has further caused a rapid shrinkage of the traditional practices and replacement of folk crop varieties by high yielding and hybrid varieties, which escalated the cost of agriculture production while stagnating productivity.

In the past few years ever since the globalisation became the mantra, plantation sector too has been at the receiving end. The unrestricted import and the sharp fall in the international price, whether it is tea, coffee, rubber or palm oil has been negatively impacted. Coffee price dropped from their highs and the producers had to take massive cut in their profit.

In coffee plantation, the average working days of the labour largely women have reduced by 30% affecting their survival.

A sharp decline is also witnessed in the tea export from $ 542 million in 1998 to $ 209 million in 2003. Tea plantation workers in Kerala, West Bengal and Tamil Nadu are facing starvation, following the closing down of several small and medium tea companies. Starvation deaths among workers of abandoned tea gardens in West Bengal have assumed disastrous proportion.

In case of rubber, the integration of Indian market to that of international led to the building of huge surplus stocks, reducing the prices, thereby intensifying the problem of growers and jeopardizing the job prospects of tapers and women associated with them.

Based on the research study, field surveys and the public hearings, Diverse Women for Diversity has made the recommendation for the National Commission for Women and the Government of India, some of the recommendations are:

1. Trade and technology policies must protect the livelihood of women in agriculture. The Agreement on Agriculture must be reviewed with a gender perspective.

2. Women's work in agro processing is both an important source of livelihood and important source of safe and culturally diverse food. Food safety laws designed to destroy household and community based agro processing need to be changed. The Sanitary and Phyto Sanitary agreement of WTO must be reviewed with women's livelihood and expertise of agro processing in focus.

3. The quantitative restrictions must be reintroduced to protect the agriculture from dumping of artificially cheap subsidized products. The right to countries to protect special products and special safe guards, measures must be used to protect the livelihood and income of women.

4. Organic farming needs to be promoted to increase women's productive role in agriculture, decrease health hazards from toxic chemicals and avoid the drain of scarce family income to pay for unnecessary chemicals.

5. Use locally procured grain for all public food related programmes and schemes like Integrated Child Development Programme, Food for Work, Jawahar Rozgar Yojana, School Mid Day Meals, as well as in all other public sector institutions such as primary health center, district health center and other places.

6. Disparity in wages based on sex must be stopped.

7. The families of suicide victims should be treated in the same way as victims of natural disasters such as earthquake.

8. Minimum support price should be fixed for the plantation sector, like tea, coffee, rubber, jute, arcanut, cardamom, where large number of women are involved.

9. Awareness should be created among women involved in agriculture and plantation sector about the impact of globalisation and WTO policies.

10. Women should be increasingly involved in the decision making process in agriculture. Today, while wife is the sarpanch, but it is only her husband who takes all the decisions.