Exploring the Diverse Livelihoods of Rural Poor Women in India

In rural India, poverty does not look the same for everyone – and for women, it carries a particular weight. Poor rural women are rarely idle. They work long hours, across multiple tasks, often without pay, recognition, or job security. Their livelihoods are woven together from agriculture, craft, animal rearing, forest produce collection, and petty trade – a patchwork of activity that keeps households afloat but rarely lifts them out of poverty. Understanding the diverse ways these women earn a living is essential to understanding why gender-sensitive economic policy in India remains urgently necessary.

The many forms of work poor rural women do 🔗

The most common image of a working rural woman in India is that of an agricultural laborer – bent over a field, planting, weeding, or harvesting. This image is largely accurate. According to NITI Aayog, around 75% of rural women work in agriculture, either as unpaid family labor on household farms or as wage laborers on others’ land. Yet agriculture is just one thread in a much larger tapestry of survival strategies.

Poor rural women typically combine several income sources simultaneously. On any given day, a woman might tend to the family’s cattle in the morning, spend midday doing paid agricultural labor on a landlord’s field, and spend the evening weaving or doing embroidery at home. This multi-activity pattern is not a sign of abundance – it reflects the inadequacy of any single source of income to meet a family’s basic needs.

Agricultural wage labor 🔗

Agricultural wage work is the most visible form of employment for poor rural women, particularly those from Dalit and Adivasi communities. Data from the India Human Development Survey shows that Dalit and Adivasi women participate in agricultural wage labor at significantly higher rates than women from forward castes – 39% and 45% respectively, compared to 13% for forward-caste women. This reflects the intersection of caste, class, and gender: the most marginalized women have the fewest alternatives and thus depend most heavily on physically demanding, poorly paid field work.

The work itself is highly seasonal. Transplanting, weeding, and harvesting happen in defined windows of the agricultural calendar, meaning steady employment is impossible. A woman might work intensively for two or three months and then find no paid agricultural work available for the remainder of the year. During these lean periods, the search for alternative income becomes critical.

Small-scale farming and unpaid family labor 🔗

Many poor rural women also work on the family’s own small plot of land – but this work typically goes unpaid and unrecognized in official labor statistics. Research from the Foundation for Agrarian Studies shows that the recent increase in women’s recorded workforce participation in India has largely happened through a rise in unpaid helpers in family enterprises, rising from 9.6% in 2017-18 to 17.7% in 2022-23. Economists describe this as distress-driven: when household income is insufficient, women are pulled into family labor not as a sign of progress but as a coping mechanism.

The average rural household’s land holdings have also shrunk over time. Data from national surveys shows the average land area held by a rural household fell from 1 hectare in 1992-93 to 0.65 hectares by 2010-11, making subsistence farming increasingly difficult. This shrinking land base pushes more women into wage labor or forces diversification into other livelihood activities.

Craft production: skill that rarely pays fairly 🔗

Handloom weaving, pottery, embroidery, basket-making, and other crafts represent a significant secondary livelihood for poor rural women across India. According to Harvard’s South Asia Institute, craft production is the second-largest source of income among rural populations after agriculture, with an estimated 11.65 million Indians engaged in craft work, with numbers expected to grow. Women form the backbone of this sector: the Handloom Census of 2019 found that 74.5% of handloom workers in rural India are women.

Despite this dominance, craft work is rarely a reliable or well-compensated livelihood. Around 77% of handloom workers belong to rural areas and come from economically disadvantaged or marginalized communities. Their work is part of an unorganized sector with no minimum wage guarantees, no social security, and no protections against market fluctuations. Many artisans work through middlemen who purchase products at low prices and sell them at a substantial markup in urban or export markets – capturing most of the value while the producer remains poor.

Craft production also involves significant health costs. Weavers frequently suffer from back problems, eye strain, and respiratory issues from working in poorly ventilated rooms. Yet the absence of healthcare coverage means these health problems often go untreated, further reducing productivity and income.

Non-traditional livelihoods: the overlooked economy 🔗

Beyond agriculture and craft, poor rural women engage in a range of less-studied livelihood activities that are often invisible in official data but critical to household survival. These include forest product collection, animal rearing, and small-scale trading.

Forest product collection 🔗

In forested and tribal regions of India – including parts of Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Odisha, and the northeastern states – women collect minor forest produce such as mahua flowers, tendu leaves, medicinal plants, wild fruits, bamboo, and firewood. This work requires deep local ecological knowledge and significant physical effort, as women often walk long distances to collect and carry heavy loads. The income from selling forest produce at local markets can be essential during agricultural off-seasons, though it is highly variable depending on season, weather, and forest access rights. For many Adivasi women, forest produce collection is not just an economic activity but also tied to cultural identity and customary rights over forest land.

Animal rearing 🔗

Livestock keeping is another critical livelihood strategy for poor rural women. Research estimates that 85% of rural women are engaged in the livestock sector in India, handling feeding, milking, cleaning, and veterinary care for cattle, goats, poultry, and pigs. Women’s participation in dairy is particularly high: the FAO estimates that 70% of livestock care is carried out by women, yet women’s contributions are frequently underreported in official statistics.

Goat rearing is especially common among landless and marginal women because it requires minimal land and investment. Goats are sometimes described as the “poor man’s cow” for this reason – accessible even when cattle are not. They provide quick returns through milk, meat, and skin, and can be sold during emergencies, effectively functioning as a savings buffer. Livestock rearing helps reduce income seasonality because, unlike crops, animals generate a more continuous stream of income throughout the year, cushioning families against crop failure.

Despite women’s dominant role in animal care, they rarely own the livestock themselves. Ownership typically remains with male household members, meaning women do the work but don’t control the asset or the income it generates. This disparity limits their economic autonomy even within an activity where their labor is central.

Trading and petty commerce 🔗

Small-scale trading – selling vegetables, snacks, or handmade goods at local markets – is another way poor rural women supplement income. This form of work requires little capital to begin and can be done flexibly around household duties, making it attractive. However, the margins are extremely thin, competition is high, and women traders frequently lack access to credit, storage facilities, or transport to reach larger markets. As a result, petty trade rarely grows beyond subsistence-level activity.

Income insecurity and the cycle of poverty 🔗

What all these livelihood activities share is a fundamental characteristic: irregularity. Research published in the Indian Journal of Labour Economics describes women who work as casual laborers as “the poorest among the poor” – subject to irregular work, unstable income, and lower earnings than men doing equivalent jobs. Rural women in casual employment earn, on average, 35% less than men in the same category. This wage gap is not incidental – it reflects structural labor market discrimination in which employers routinely pay women less for the same work, evading provisions of the Equal Remuneration Act of 1976.

Over 94% of women workers in India are employed in informal, low-paying, and insecure jobs, according to the Economic Survey of 2023. The absence of written contracts, social security, or access to credit means that any shock – an illness, a drought, a family crisis – can eliminate income entirely. With no savings buffer and no formal safety net, women cycle back into poverty repeatedly, regardless of how hard they work.

Data For India’s analysis of labour surveys highlights another dimension of this precarity: rural women are increasingly entering the workforce through subsidiary work – activities done in addition to main household duties, for shorter hours and lower pay. This kind of marginal participation is counted as employment in official statistics, which can create a misleading picture of women’s economic empowerment when in reality many are simply adding unpaid or poorly paid work to already heavy domestic burdens.

Challenges in livelihood sustainability 🔗

The barriers poor rural women face in securing sustainable livelihoods are structural and interlocking. Land ownership remains concentrated among men, denying women the most fundamental productive asset in an agrarian economy. Access to formal credit is limited – banks rarely lend to women without collateral, and microfinance loans, while more accessible, often come with high interest rates. Skill development programs and agricultural extension services have historically reached women at far lower rates than men: despite 85% of rural women working in the livestock sector, women livestock farmers remain largely invisible to policymakers, with no gender-disaggregated data and training programs that rarely reach them.

Geographic isolation compounds these problems. Poor rural women in remote areas lack access to markets where they could sell products at fair prices, to banks where they could save or borrow, or to information about government schemes designed to help them. Middlemen and intermediaries often fill this gap – but at a cost, capturing a large share of the value women create. Spatial analysis of women’s work in India confirms that high levels of women’s self-employment are concentrated precisely in the poorest districts – suggesting that self-employment in these contexts is less an opportunity than a necessity.

Climate change is adding new pressure. A UNDP India Report from 2022 highlights that women are more vulnerable to climate-induced droughts and crop failures, and that women in rural areas bear additional unpaid burdens – such as walking longer distances for water and fuel – as natural resources become scarcer. For women whose livelihoods depend on forest produce, seasonal agricultural labor, or rain-fed farming, erratic rainfall and longer dry spells directly undermine income stability.

None of this means that poor rural women are passive victims. The diversity and ingenuity of their livelihood strategies demonstrate remarkable resourcefulness under severe constraint. Initiatives like Moram in Birbhum, West Bengal – where over 100 tribal women run independent craft production and sales units – show what becomes possible when women are given access to training, infrastructure, and markets on their own terms. But such examples remain exceptions. Systemic change – in land rights, credit access, wage equality, and social protection – is what would make sustainable livelihoods the rule rather than the rare achievement.

What do you think? If women perform the majority of agricultural and livestock work in rural India yet own very little of the land and animals they tend, what would genuine economic empowerment for them actually require? And given how much of women’s labor goes uncounted in official statistics, how might better data collection change the policies designed to support them?

References

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