







































Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal 5 (1): 223-229, January 2022 

 
NOTES FROM THE FIELD 

Women-headed Households in Agriculture: Report 
from West Bengal, India 

Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt and Itishree Pattnaik 

The year is 2018, and we are walking through thick, wet clay, without any 
terra firma of the kind we are accustomed to. We are trying to access one of 
the hundreds of chars—sandy, low-lying river islands located where the 
Ganga, known locally as the Hooghly River, meets the Bay of Bengal. The 
mouth of the delta is known as the Sundarbans (or Sundarban in Bangla), 
created by the waters that flow through the land and the precious gift of 
mud they bring. The entire area is made of clayey silt, carried down from 
the mountains by the rivers over millennia. Sundarban is a dynamic 
landscape where the distinction between land and water is blurred and 
farming and fishing are inseparable in building the livelihoods of people.  

We are going to meet women-heads of households from Amarabati, 
Shibpur, Bishalakshmipur, and Rajnagar Srinathgram villages in Fraserganj 
and Budhakhali gram panchayats in Namkhana block of Kakdwip 
subdivision of the South 24 Parganas district in West Bengal. We have been 
working with these women through a locally-based non-governmental 
organization (NGO) for some months. Our present purpose is to talk about 
recent changes in the social, economic, and physical landscapes in these 
villages, from where large numbers of men have migrated out to nearby 
cities and towns. Men have migrated to earn cash, to help families  cope 
with the growing pressures on rural livelihoods, leaving women as de facto 
heads of households to farm the land. Men’s outmigration is a feature seen 
in other parts of West Bengal and across India (Maity, Mazumdar, and Das 
2018; Chandrasekhar, Sahoo, and Swaminathan 2020; Garikipati 2008).  

 
 Crawford School of Public Policy, ANU College of Asia and the Pacific, The Australian 
National University. kuntala.lahiri-dutt@anu.edu.au  
 Gujarat Institute of Development Research (GIDR). itipattnaik7@gmail.com  
Copyright © Lahiri-Dutt and Pattnaik 2022. Released under Creative Commons Attribution 

© NonCommercial 4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC 4.0) by the author.  

Published by Indian Society for Ecological Economics (INSEE), c/o Institute of  Economic 
Growth, University Enclave, North Campus, Delhi 110007.  

ISSN: 2581–6152 (print); 2581–6101 (web) 

DOI: https://doi.org/10.37773/ees.v5i1.590  

mailto:kuntala.lahiri-dutt@anu.edu.au
mailto:itipattnaik7@gmail.com
https://doi.org/10.37773/ees.v5i1.590


Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal [224] 

 

In this note, we offer brief glimpses into the changing lives of rural peasant 
women. “Women-headed household” (WHHs henceforth) are defined as 
those households where farm-level decision-making is made primarily by 
women. A farming WHH may be led by a women farmer with a long-term 
migrant husband, a widow and/or abandoned wife, or someone whose 
husband is usually a peasant, but in most cases, is engaged in other jobs 
close to the village. The family of the woman may have some land (owner-
cultivator), she may cultivate someone else’s land on rent (bhagchashi or 
sharecropper), she may work on someone else’s land on a daily wage basis 
(agricultural labourer), or her situation might be a complex combination of 
these three basic categories. For example, a sharecropper can also be an 
owner-cultivator and even employ labour to work on her land. A WHH 
may also be involved in other community activities such as the preparation 
of mid-day meals, running crèches and day-care centres, food-for-work 
programmes, and other tertiary activities. 

Our survey covered 100 WHHs covering four villages. In addition to these 
women, we deployed ethnographic methods such as field observations, 
interviewing locally important pepole such as village elders, village council 
leaders (panchayat pradhans), and leaders of self-help groups whom we 
thought may be able to reflect on the recent changes in the rural landscape. 
Finally, we also held focus group discussions with village women to talk 
about their perceptions regarding the changing climate and its livelihood 
consequences for them. The result of these research processes was a 
combination of quantitative and qualitative data, generated through 
questionnaire-based surveys, and observations, interviews and discussions. 
We also used desk-based reviews of previous studies and secured data from 
secondary sources, including historical and geographical descriptions of the 
Kakdwip subdivision and its social context, economic situation, agricultural 
history, and population. This research was part of our study “Farmers of 
the Future: Challenges of a Feminized Agriculture in India” funded jointly 
by the Australian Research Council and the Indian Council of Social 
Science Research (Pattnaik and Lahiri-Dutt 2021). 

The distance from Kolkata to Kakdwip town is only 80 kilometres, but the 
villages present a world that is utterly different from that of the metropolis. 
Poverty is acute and is very observable: in Namkhana block, about 48% of 
households fall below the poverty line (BPL) and 27% of the population is 
from the Scheduled Castes. The mainstay of the rural economy is 
monsoonal aman paddy. Around 85% of villagers rely on such mono-crop 
agriculture, and annual production levels are much lower than the national 
average (2.225 tones/ha against the all-India average of 3.280 tones/ha). 
Moreover, the per capita land-holding and the average size of cultivated 



[225] Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt and Itishree Pattnaik 

land in the block are both miniscule at 0.084 ha and 0.41 ha, respectively, as 
compared to the national average of 1.08 ha for small farmers in India 
(Government of India 2019).  

The survey reveals that the average age for the surveyed woman heads of 
households is 45 years. A total of 56% were married, with living husbands, 
36% were widowed, and the remaining 8% were divorced or single women 
at the time. The average size of the cultivated land owned by WHHs is 0.08 
ha. The majority of WHHs (68%) are unable to read or write, have a debt 
burden (as 71% of households have a loan to repay, usually to the local 
mahajan or moneylender, taken at a time of duress to tide over a financial 
crisis), and as many as 58% of them live in kuchcha houses made of mud. 

The annual average income of households is around ₹36,000 (income from 
various sources added together including food produced for own 
consumption), i.e., they are poorer than other households despite nearly 
half of them receiving some remittance irregularly.  

Women’s headship of households is higher in the Sundarbans than the rest 
of West Bengal (or even India) as a whole. This high headship is due to 
many factors: lack of economic opportunities leading to high rates of 
outmigration of men (evidenced by the fact that 64% of the surveyed 
households have someone who has migrated from the village); high rates of 
tiger attacks (there is one village locally known as “the village of widows” 
with only a handful of men); and environment-related, such as frequent 
flooding, increased frequency and strength of cyclones, riverbank erosion, 
and salinity, as saltwater poisons the soil, rendering the land unfit for 
farming. All these have a gendered impact, as they lead to the out-migration 
of men, and families are forced to diversify their livelihoods towards non-
farm activities.  

Of all the women heads of households in farming, owner-cultivators form 
47%; in this group, 26% are exclusively owner-cultivators. Among the rest, 
28% are agricultural labourers (those without any land to till) and another 
28% are agricultural labourers as well as owner-cultivators/contract 
cultivators/sharecroppers/mortgage land cultivators. As noted earlier, most 
of the owner cultivators have only tiny pieces of land. Like in other parts of 
the country, in recent years, thika-khajana or contract cultivation has gained 
significance in the area and 25% of WHHs practice some kind of contract-
based farming. The terms and conditions for thika-khajana vary; usually, the 
contract value for barsati chas (monsoon crop) is lower than that of kharati 
chas (kharif crop) and is highest for boro chas (winter cultivation). Many 
families put their land on bandhyaki-sud if they need money for an 
emergency such as someone’s illness, or a child’s marriage. In such cases of 



Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal [226] 

 

land mortgaging, the lender can take over the borrower’s land for 
cultivation as soon as the borrower stops paying the interest on the loan.  

On an average, agriculture contributes around 39% to household incomes 
(income from agriculture is calculated by multiplying the crop production 
with the sold price). Most households take up other livelihood activities 
such as drying fish, fishing, and trading in rice to supplement their meagre 
incomes. About 23% work for the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural 
Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA) schemes, but the incomes 
generated are very low as they hardly get the opportunity to work under the 
scheme for more than 10-20 days. Quite a few (less than 10%) women also 
work as domestic help or as attendants in hotels that serve the tourists who 
visit the nearby town. In general, most WHHs cultivate paddy/rice for their 
own consumption and the extra amounts are sold. In the salty, low-lying 
lands, not many other crops can be grown.  

Despite the varying conditions among households, the dependency burden 
of women heads of households is uniformly high—each individual 
respondent has to provide for an average of 2 children and 0.3 elderly 
people. The children are generally young, with 85% of WHHs having 
children of school age.  

WHHs feel that farming practices have changed in the last 10 or 15 years, 
primarily in the areas of ploughing, hybrid seed use, use of fertilizers, 
introduction of mechanized aid, type of labour, and technology. A total of 
98% feel that paddy yield has increased due to modern technology. They 
observed that leasing of land—i.e., contract-based farming—has increased. 
Traditionally, farming was a joint task shared by men and women, the latter 
assisting men by carrying out repetitive tasks and processing the paddy. We 
found that women are now taking the lead role in farming. The use of 
modern agricultural machinery has reduced manual labour, and many 
women aspire to own productive assets such as power tillers and shallow 
irrigation pumps. 

Slightly over half (56%) of the WHHs work as agricultural labourers, but 
only 28% are solely agricultural labourers, while the remaining are 
agricultural labourers as well as owner cultivators/contract 
cultivators/sharecroppers/mortgage land cultivators. This complexity 
reflects a local custom where most women contribute labour in cultivating 
the agricultural land of each other’s families. They call this custom badla 
(return). Sharecropping has declined in the villages. The normal practice of 
sharecropping is if the cultivator bears all the costs of cultivation, they will 
get 75% of the yield and the owner will receive 25%. In cases where the 



[227] Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt and Itishree Pattnaik 

owner bears all the costs, the share is 50:50. There is a positive relationship 
between contract cultivation and the income from one bigha (0.13 ha). 

Women’s paid work as agricultural labourers and in other non-farm 
activities provides a somewhat better income for families as compared to 
working in their own fields and working in other’s fields as badla. However, 

the local wage rates for agricultural labour are low (only about ₹70–80), and 
the number of days such jobs are available is meagre at only about 15–20 
days per year. While work as agricultural wage labour provides some cash, it 
is not easy to find such work as most of women’s labour is contributed for 
badla. Other non-farm jobs such as casual work in hotels and employment 
as domestic help provide better incomes, but those opportunities are 
limited and dependent upon seasons, distance of residence from main 
roads, and so on.  

Yet, we found that women heading households in Sundarban are also 
increasingly involved in major decision-making within their families. It is 
not uncommon for them to make decisions regarding their children’s 
education and household finances. However, major decisions, such as those 
concerning building a house and borrowing or lending money, are remotely 
controlled by men. Further, in most cases, major decisions related to 
farming and the sales and purchase of assets and major farm inputs tend to 
be taken by men over the phone.  

There are exceptions, of course. Let us tell the story of Arati Baitalik (name 
changed for ethical reasons) is a 58-year-old widow who exemplifies our 
observations. Arati is a victim of cyclone Aila, which made landfall in the 
area in late May 2009. She owns 0.5 bighas of cultivating land in Uttar 
Shibpur village. However, she took a small loan from the local mahajan 
(lender) that she could not repay, and so the lender took her land as 
mortgage. Arati has two dependents, both school-going children, and she 
confidently spoke to us about her position within the family and 
community. Arati makes all the major household decisions but her 
workload is also huge. After performing her household duties, she fishes, 
works on her farm, and works on another farm as a part of badla. She is an 
agricultural labourer during the monsoon season, but for the rest of the 
year, she processes paddy purchased from the local market to sell in 
Kakdwip market. When we spoke with Arati about the difficulties in her 
life, she presented an optimistic outlook and firmly believed that her 
children will look after her. 

Arati’s case is exemplary also because most women get few opportunities to 
find livelihood opportunities other than farming. Even if she is literate, a 
woman usually has no training in farming, either traditionally from parents 



Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal [228] 

 

or from agriculture extension services. They do not receive credit as well; an 
overwhelming majority—97%—told us that they have not received any 
agriculture-related aid or technical training from the government or any 
NGOs. However, many want these exposures; while interacting with us, 
women stated their aspiration to learn new methods of fishing and farming 
paddy. Some even expressed their interest in entering new income-earning 
work where the requirement of manual labour would be less. One woman 
was ready to open her own grocery store.   

Overall, the study examined women’s interests, priorities, and challenges in 
farming. Many of them observed that fishponds have changed due to an 
increase in silting, water pollution, and weed growth. Many were fearful of 
the rapidly changing environment and worried about obtaining a good 
harvest. The lack of irrigation, paucity of land, and rising incidence of pests 
and insects are the farming-related difficulties that they observed. These, 
combined with the inequities caused by gender roles, exacerbate the 
challenges for women farmers. The saline soil requires significant amounts 
of effort and investment that women from poorer households are unable to 
garner.  

As we end this note, we might remind the readers of the fact that this area 
was the centre of a well-known peasant movement called the Tebhaga 
Andolan initiated by the Bangiya Pradeshik Kisan Sabha after the Bengal 
famine of 1943. Tebhaga Andolan aimed to secure for sharecropper 
peasants a better deal within the existing land tenure. The movement led to 
the enactment of the Bargadari Act of 1950, which was incorporated in the 
West Bengal Land Reform Act 1956 (as Chapter III). The act legally 
recognized the sharecroppers’ right to two-thirds of the produce when they 
supplied the necessary inputs. Unfortunately, as we saw, the act could not 
change the circumstances of smallholder farmers and sharecroppers in the 
region. Studying the area seventy years later, we felt that not much has 
changed for poor peasants, except that they are now under even more 
pressure as the climate has also turned hostile towards them. 

Women are caught under the multi-faceted pressures exerted by a 
combination of social, economic, and physical forces in the Sundarbans. On 
the one hand, male outmigration has increased their work burdens. On the 
other, the changing climate and declining farm incomes have posed 
unforeseen challenges to women. Trudging through the mud, we felt a 
sense of urgency and helplessness and the need for immediate measures. 
There is, however, no easy prescription that can be offered as the solution; 
perhaps we need more detailed investigations to understand how each of 
the external forces acts in conjunction with the local context and develop 



[229] Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt and Itishree Pattnaik 

policies that are tailored to the region and accepted by the women who bear 
most of the brunt.  

 

REFERENCES 

Chandrasekhar, S, Soham Sahoo, and Hema Swaminathan. 2020.  “Seasonal 
Migration and Feminization of Farm Management: Evidence from India”. Working 
Paper no. 630. Bangalore: Indian Institute of Management. 
https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3745554  

Garikipati, Supriya. 2008. “Agricultural Wage Work, Seasonal Migration and the 
Widening Gender Gap: Evidence From a Semi-Arid Region of Andhra Pradesh.” 
The European Journal of Development Research 20 (4), 629–648. 
https://doi.org/10.1080/09578810802464870  

Government of India. 2019. Agricultural Statistics at a Glance 2018. New delhi: 
Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare, Department of Agriculture, 
Cooperation & Farmers Welfare, and Directorate of Economics and Statistics. 
Government of India.  

Maity, Kingsuk, Debasis Mazumdar, and Pinaki Das. 2018. “Male Out-Migration 
and its Impact on Women Empowerment in West Bengal.” Economic Affairs 63 (2): 
459–467. 10.30954/0424-2513.2.2018.23 

Pattnaik, Itishree, and Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt. 2021. “Do Women Like to Farm? 
Evidence of Growing Burdens of Farming on Women in Rural India.” The Journal 
of Peasant Studies. https://doi.org/10.1080/03066150.2020.1867540  

 

https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3745554
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http://dx.doi.org/10.30954/0424-2513.2.2018.23
https://doi.org/10.1080/03066150.2020.1867540

