Abstract:

       The latest Indian Census figures indicate that only 32.8 percent of women are primary workers in agriculture, while 81.1 percent of men are recorded as primary workers in the sector. This huge gap in the national statistics is belied by observations within households and communities where women labour from the wee hours of the morning till late at night.  This talk with address the challenges to recording women’s participation and its relation to unequal patterns of gendered land ownership and the role played by extremely hierarchized social norms on gendered behaviour. It will make the case for an alternative focus on the work that women do, and their responsibilities in ensuring the production of crops and livestock will ensure a more inclusive sustainable framework of making visible women’s work and accounting for it in sectoral statistics and national income.

About the Speaker:

      Dr.Shailaja Fennell is Director of Research at Cambridge Central Asia Forum, a University Senior Lecturer in Development Studies, and a Fellow of Jesus College, University of Cambridge. She was awarded her degrees of BA, MA, and MPhil in Economics from the University of Delhi, and then went on to read for her MPhil and PhD at the Faculty of Economics and Politics, University of Cambridge. Her doctoral research was on long term agricultural trends in India and China. 

     Dr. Fennell is a Co-Investigator on TIGR2ESS, a research programme to study how to improve crop productivity and water use, identify appropriate crops and farming practices for sustainable rural development, with funding of £ 7.8 million form the Global Challenges Fund of RCUK.She has been a consultant on inequality and rural development with Oxfam GB (2014-15), on evidence based policy with the World Bank (2013-15), and was earlier the social science expert on agriculture and gender and a member of the five-person team that authored the European Report on Development on Fragility in Africa, 2008-09. Dr Fennell’s research interests include institutional reform and collective action, food production and rural development; gender norms and gender gaps in development interventions, and provision of public goods and the role of partnerships.

    Her recent publications include The Handbook of BRICS (with P. Anand, F. Comim and J Weiss), Oxford University Press (2018); Rules, rubrics and riches: the interrelations between legal reform and international development, Routledge (2010);Gender Education and Equality in a Global Context: conceptual frameworks and policy perspectives, Routledge (ed. with M. Arnot, 2008).  She has published in leading publications such China Quarterly, Ecological Economics, Comparative Education and Journal of Human Development and Capabilities.