Women farmers
Women farmers, like Kalawati, labour hard, but there is very little recognition of their work. "Our menfolk do not even lift a glass of water and expect us to do all household chores besides labouring in the fields. Now there is a slight change in their attitude as we have started demanding some care from them."
Kalawati feels very bad that even though women do a lot of farming work, they are not recognized as farmers--the word farmer still implies men only. The biggest problem of women farmers is that their workload is twofold--they have to do domestic work as well as work in the fields. They have to manage family and farming both.
Land ownership
"There is one and a half bigha of land, which is in my husband's name. Earlier it belonged to his father and after his death it came to my husband. There is no land in my name. We too have our rights, but when we ask for them we are sweet talked and blackmailed emotionally--the husband would say everything belongs to you only. There must be legal papers to prove our ownership too".
Women's education, marriage and family planning
Kalawati is strongly for girls' education and has no intentions of getting her daughter, studying in class 12, married till she is educated properly. She says that, "Earlier the emphasis was on training daughters for household work like cooking, cleaning etc. but now there has been a lot of awareness and people do send their daughters to schools". Kalawati also believes in a small family. "One should not have more than two kids. Given the high rate of inflation, if people have more kids they will not be able to bring them up properly."
Today and yesterday
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
