Maharashtra challenges a patriarchal history of land, labour and recognition

Deepali Bhattacharya

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There are some policy decisions whose significance cannot be understood by looking only at the document they create.

A certificate can be just a certificate.

But sometimes, a certificate challenges centuries of social conditioning.

As Maharashtra prepares to issue its first Women Farmer Certificates, recognising women as farmers irrespective of whether the agricultural land is registered in their names, I believe we should understand this moment in precisely that way.

Maharashtra has done something remarkable.

It has challenged one of the oldest equations in our agrarian society: land belongs to the man, therefore the farmer is the man.

The woman? She works. She sows. She transplants. She weeds. She harvests. She preserves seeds. She tends livestock. She manages household food security.

But for generations, patriarchal society found another word for her: helper.

That one word tells us a great deal about how patriarchy works.

The history behind the invisibility

Women’s secondary position in agriculture did not emerge because women contributed less. It emerged from a social order in which property, inheritance, authority and lineage were overwhelmingly organised around men.

In some of my much earlier development work in Bihar, I wrote about the continuing influence of a feudal social order, alongside deeply entrenched caste structures, on women’s position. I described the interconnected workings of patriarchy, patrilineal inheritance and patrilocal marriage: property and family identity travelled largely through men, while women moved after marriage into the husband’s household, often without corresponding claims over productive assets.¹

That history matters to the present discussion. Because land is not merely soil. Land has historically represented wealth, lineage, security, status and authority.

When ownership became masculine, authority over agriculture became masculine too. And gradually we created an extraordinary contradiction: women could perform agricultural labour without acquiring agricultural identity.

The patriarchal system did not necessarily prevent women from working. It depended upon their work. What it restricted was something more consequential: their claim to ownership, decision-making and recognition.

West Bengal: “Men are farmers. Women are helpers.”

Years later, while working with women farmers in West Bengal as Gender Specialist under the USAID–PepsiCo Integrated Land and Resource Governance programme implemented by Tetra Tech, I encountered the same structural problem in another form.

Our work with Gender Action Learning Systems (GALS) and Nurturing Connections looked beyond agricultural productivity to gender norms, household decision-making, unpaid care, productive resources, entitlements, voice and leadership.²

One of the gender norms documented in the programme could hardly have stated the problem more starkly: “Men are farmers and women are their helping hand.” Alongside it were other assumptions: land belonged to men; women were not seen as property owners; men were expected to make agricultural decisions; technical agricultural knowledge was considered a male domain; and farming meetings and extension opportunities often went primarily to men.³

Think about the circularity of that system. A woman is not considered a farmer, so she is not invited to agricultural training. Because she is not invited to training or formally engaged by agricultural institutions, the man becomes the recognised farmer. And because the man is recognised as the farmer, resources, information and institutional relationships continue to flow towards him.

Patriarchy reproduces itself not merely through attitudes, but through systems.

Even unpaid care becomes part of this arrangement. Women farmers carry substantial household and care responsibilities, leaving them time-poor and less able to participate in training and agricultural institutions.³

Bihar: knowledge without ownership

More recently, my work with women in north Bihar brought me face to face with another version of the same contradiction.

Women involved in food sovereignty, indigenous seed conservation, kitchen gardens and sustainable agriculture possessed considerable knowledge. They could identify seed varieties, understand seasonal changes, preserve seeds, advise others about crops and manage household nutrition. Their participation in collectives expanded their confidence and their aspirations towards enterprise, markets, leadership and a stronger role in local decision-making.

And yet, repeatedly, the conversation returned to the same place: the land was in a man’s name. Larger decisions around cultivation, sale and investment frequently remained with men. Engagement with banks or formal institutions could still require male mediation.

 

The woman’s knowledge was visible; her authority over the asset was far less secure.

From my work on Deconstructing Patriarchy

 

A woman can know which seed will survive an uncertain monsoon. She can know when it should be planted. She can preserve it. She can teach other farmers. And still the land on which all this knowledge is exercised may not bear her name. This is what I have come to describe as knowledge without ownership.⁴

Darbhanga: when livelihood begins to alter identity

In Darbhanga, women had long participated deeply in agriculture — sowing, transplanting, weeding and harvesting — yet much of that labour remained absorbed into household responsibility rather than recognised as economic contribution.

The introduction of makhana cultivation and more structured livelihood opportunities began to alter this relationship. Women began earning directly. They began handling money. They contributed to household expenditure. And gradually, they participated more in financial decisions.⁵

 

“Now we earn, so we are also asked.”

A woman participant in Darbhanga

 

There is an entire theory of women’s empowerment contained in that one sentence. Now we earn. Therefore, we are also asked.

But it also reveals how deeply unequal the original relationship was. Why should a woman need to demonstrate income before her opinion becomes worthy of being sought? Why should decades of agricultural labour not have been enough?

This is precisely why recognition matters.

Maharashtra: where something remarkable is happening

And then I come back to Maharashtra.

Here, my perspective comes not from implementing the programme but from evaluating the Women’s Initiative for Food Sovereignty in Sangamner and Akole. That distinction matters. As an evaluator, I had the opportunity to listen to women, field teams and partner institutions, examine what had changed over four years, and assess the evidence of change with some distance from implementation.

The initiative reached around 400 rural and tribal women farmers. Eight community seed banks were established, conserving around 4,000 kg of indigenous grains. Women became involved in indigenous seed conservation, organic cultivation, value addition, Participatory Guarantee Systems and market linkages.⁶

But the most significant shift I saw in the evidence was not simply agricultural. It was institutional and social.

The community seed banks became collective spaces governed by women themselves — involving decisions about seed selection, preservation, exchange and cropping. Women who had earlier been perceived largely as agricultural helpers increasingly came to be recognised as farmers, seed custodians and decision-makers.⁷

 

“Earlier we only worked. Now we decide.”

A woman farmer in the Sangamner case study

 

For me, those words connect directly with what Maharashtra is doing today. Earlier we only worked. Now we decide. And perhaps now we can add: now the state recognises us too.

Why Maharashtra’s decision is a challenge to patriarchy

This is why I hesitate to describe Maharashtra’s action merely as a welfare measure for women. It is potentially much more radical than that.

Patriarchy survives partly because certain categories have been made to appear natural: the landowner is male; the head of the household is male; the farmer is male; the woman assists.

But these categories were never natural. They were constructed through social norms, inheritance systems, property relations, institutional practices and generations of repetition.

My work on Deconstructing Patriarchy has increasingly convinced me that patriarchy does not survive only by excluding women. It can also include women while retaining male authority. A woman may work, earn, acquire agricultural expertise, join a collective and even be celebrated for her contribution. But the crucial questions remain: Who owns? Who decides? Whose authority is recognised?

Acceptance of women’s participation does not automatically mean acceptance of women’s authority. Development can expand women’s productive role while leaving the final location of decision-making substantially unchanged.⁸

Maharashtra is now intervening precisely in that space between participation and recognition. That is why this matters.

A policy recommendation becoming reality

There is another reason this announcement feels particularly significant to me.

In the policy document we developed for International Women’s Day 2026, after examining experiences from Maharashtra, Bihar and elsewhere, one of our recommendations to governments was remarkably straightforward: “Recognise women as farmers in official records.”⁹

We made that recommendation because our own field evidence kept showing us the same contradiction. Women were central to agriculture but peripheral to ownership. Central to production but peripheral to recognition. Central to household food security but peripheral to agricultural institutions.

In Sangamner, our IWD analysis explicitly noted that women were central to seed preservation, crop diversity and household nutrition management while remaining insufficiently recognised as farmers within formal and community structures.¹⁰

And now Maharashtra is moving in exactly the direction we were asking governments to move. That deserves recognition.

But recognition must lead towards power

Celebration should not make us uncritical.

A farmer certificate is not the same thing as ownership of land. Recognition cannot substitute indefinitely for inheritance rights, control over productive assets, access to finance or authority over agricultural income.

My Bihar experience has taught me this particularly strongly. A woman may become recognised as a knowledgeable farmer, community mobiliser or seed keeper and still have limited control over the asset on which her work depends.

 

Recognition is meaningful, but recognition without redistribution has limits.

From my Deconstructing Patriarchy work

 

Maharashtra therefore should not be seen as completing the journey. It has opened an important door. The next challenge is ensuring that recognition becomes entitlement, institutional access, bargaining power, decision-making authority and, increasingly, ownership.

For today, Maharashtra deserves to be celebrated

Women’s movements have fought for decades against the assumption that women’s work is secondary simply because it takes place inside families, on family farms or without an individual title attached to it.

Across West Bengal, Bihar and Maharashtra, I have encountered different versions of the same woman.

She knows the land. She knows the crop. She knows the seed. She knows when rain is late. She knows what the household will eat if the harvest fails. Often, she knows agriculture as intimately as — sometimes more intimately than — the person whose name appears on the papers.

Yet history placed her beside the farmer rather than allowing her to be the farmer.

Well done, Maharashtra.

Not simply for issuing a certificate, but for confronting a patriarchal definition that should have been challenged long ago.

For saying that ownership in a man’s name cannot make a woman’s labour disappear.

For recognising that agricultural identity must arise from women’s contribution, knowledge and work — not only from a male-dominated history of property.

And perhaps most importantly, for beginning to replace one of rural India’s oldest descriptions — “She helps him farm” — with one that women have earned through generations of labour:

“She is a farmer.”

That is not a small semantic correction. It is a redistribution of identity.

And if Maharashtra can carry that recognition from paper into institutions, resources and decision-making, it may have done something even larger: shown India one way of challenging patriarchy from the ground beneath our feet.

Notes and references from my own work

1. Early Bihar development documentation: reflections on the feudal bent of rural and semi-urban society, caste, patriarchy, patrilineal inheritance and patrilocal marriage.

2. Deepali Bhattacharya, Gender Specialist, Tetra Tech Development Services — USAID & PepsiCo / Integrated Land and Resource Governance (West Bengal), 2020–2022; work on GALS and Nurturing Connections.

3. ILRG GALS Training Manual (West Bengal): gender norms affecting women’s recognition as farmers, land ownership, participation in agricultural decisions, extension services and unpaid care.

4. Deepali Bhattacharya, Deconstructing Patriarchy: field vignette on “Knowledge without Ownership” and the distinction between participation and power.

5. Darbhanga field documentation and case study: “From Invisible Labour to Recognised Farmers.”

6. Impact Assessment Report 2025: Women’s Initiative for Food Sovereignty, Sangamner & Akole — 400 women farmers, eight community seed banks and approximately 4,000 kg of indigenous grains conserved.

7. IWD 2026 Give to Gain policy document: Women-Led Seed Sovereignty & Agroecological Transition; Sangamner/Akole case evidence.

8. Deepali Bhattacharya, Deconstructing Patriarchy: argument on the institutional reproduction of patriarchy and the difference between women’s participation and women’s authority.

9. IWD 2026 Give to Gain policy document, Policy Recommendations for Governments: “Recognise women as farmers in official records.”

10. IWD 2026 Give to Gain policy document: Sangamner evidence on women’s central role in seed preservation, crop diversity and household nutrition, alongside gaps in formal recognition.

Author’s note: This article draws only on my own field experience, evaluation work, programme documentation, IWD 2026 policy writing and research drafts, alongside the Maharashtra announcement that prompted this reflection.