It is just before the Kharif season (autumn crop in South Asia). Shoba visited her maternal home to stay for a couple of days because once the sowing season starts, she will be occupied for at least a month working in the fields and won’t be able to spend time with family, the same with the harvest season.

Most of the women in her neighbourhood are engaged in agriculture. Most of the sowing, weeding, and harvesting of paddy, groundnut, and cotton (major crops in Telangana, India) is done by them; men of the households, on the other hand, are involved in tilling, applying fertilisers, and transportation. Shoba’s family was about to buy a piece of agricultural land in their village, and she was discussing that they would be registering the land in her son’s name. “Why don’t you register the land in your name?” asked her niece. “In my name? It has to be registered under the farmer’s name, she said. “But he is not a farmer, right?” “Yes, but he is a man, and he helps us with the fieldwork whenever he comes home,” Shoba said.

It is how things have been; many of the women in the village do not have any land rights, except for a very few. Shoba’s daughter-in-law, who is the only child of her parents, is married off at 19, and the four-acre land owned by her family is now looked after by Shoba’s son, but not even a single decision is taken with his wife’s consent, who should be the owner of the land legally. How fair is this? Women working all day in the field are not considered farmers, even by themselves, with a lot of social stigma attached to it. They always believe they must work at home and in the field, but do not have the right to have a piece of land in their name, as they are not considered the head of the household.

Women comprise nearly half of the agriculture labour force across the globe, yet there is a huge disparity in land ownership. Less than 20% of the agricultural landowners are women.