UC Santa Barbara

Globalization and neoliberal policy shifts have increased market volatility and eroded farmers’ safety nets in India, leading to the world’s largest farmer protests in 2020-2021. Two interrelated trends accompany these shifts: a rapid exit of men from agriculture and intensifying climate change effects. As a result, India, like several other parts of the world, has been experiencing a feminization of farm operation. In the context of an increasingly hostile agricultural landscape, this dissertation explores the implications of an expanded control over agrarian land for female farmers, especially in climate vulnerable districts of India.This research employs a mixed-methods approach. For the qualitative segment of my research, I conducted 45 focus groups with 583 women farmers as well as 18 semi-structured interviews with journalists, NGO representatives, government officials, and farmers in five climate vulnerable districts (Chitrakoot, Parbhani, Beed, Dharashiv, and Latur). These districts have three types of male exit from agriculture: outmigration, farmer suicides, and a greater focus on nonagricultural activities in the village. I supplement my qualitative fieldwork insights with my own survey administered to 300 farm households in Chitrakoot and an econometric analysis of 9698 rural cultivator households using the nationally representative India Human Development Survey 2 (IHDS 2) for external validity. This dissertation has three key findings. First, female headed farmer households tend to be negatively selected: they are less wealthy and own smaller areas of land than male headed farmer households. Second, land (both quantity and quality) is an extremely important determinant of women’s farming experiences and significantly mediates women’s access to and use of other complementary agricultural inputs such as water, labor, and capital. Third, patriarchal norms exacerbate negative selection issues and further reduce female farmers’ access to vital agricultural inputs such as labor and water. Therefore, while a vast literature outlines the benefits of land rights for female empowerment, I argue that the circumstances under which land rights are received matter (type of male exit, land characteristics, patriarchal norms, and climate change). Feminization of farm operation grants women farmers operating or ownership rights to agrarian land but because of the above factors, the women I study are not necessarily better-off as a result of these land rights. My research also advocates for a more gender sensitive agricultural policy approach that takes into account restrictive socio-cultural norms that women farmers face as well as the need to design policies tailored to the socio-economic background of the woman farmer instead of treating women farmers as a homogeneous group.