We found a match
Your institution may have access to this item. Find your institution then sign in to continue.
- Title
Widowhood and Women Farmers: Structural Inequalities and Negotiation Strategies.
- Authors
Wagh, Anurekha Chari
- Abstract
The paper examines the negotiation strategies adopted by widows (women whose farmer husbands have committed suicides) in Wardha district, Maharashtra, India1 . Agrarian crisis manifested in ‘suicides of farmers’, has rendered ‘widow farmers’ into ‘vulnerable within the vulnerable’ category, thereby placing them at high risk. The paper drawing from global south literature argues that the widow farmers develop negotiation strategies to deal with the structural inequalities as a result of agrarian distress. What then is the nature of the distress? One, it occurs at the level of everyday practices of livelihood, where the widow farmers deal with non-viable agrarian conditions, by developing short and long terms coping mechanisms to deal with the crises under extreme economic hardships. Two, the widow farmers constantly devise strategies to deal with her identity of a ‘single widow mother/worker’ using the ‘legitimized patriarchal codes’ of accepted behaviour, in a highly entrenched patriarchal agrarian structure, that perceives the state of widowhood as ‘stigmatised’ and that of ‘single women’ as exposed and abandoned and thus need to be regulated. Through the analysis of the coping mechanisms and negotiation strategies the paper establishes that the widow farmers constantly engage with the structural inequalities of economy and challenges of identity, by using the ‘patriarchal codes’ available to them. In this process the women not only accept and adhere but also question and confront patriarchy; thereby reinforcing and reconfiguring patriarchy simultaneously. The paper concludes by stating that widow farmers constantly push the boundaries and negotiate for their ‘spaces’.
- Subjects
MAHARASHTRA (India); WIDOWS; WOMEN farmers; WIDOWHOOD; NEGOTIATION; SINGLE mothers; SINGLE women; DEVELOPING countries
- Publication
Artha Vijnana, 2023, Vol 65, Issue 2, p188
- ISSN
0971-586X
- Publication type
Article