Contending that women own only 13 per cent of the agricultural land in India, BJD’s Cuttack MP Bhartruhari Mahtab sought to know what steps the government was taking to tackle patriarchy entrenched in the farm sector which had resulted in discrimination against women. Raising the issue during Zero Hour, Mahtab cited an Oxfam report — published a decade ago — which stated that women undertook 80 per cent of farm work in India though only 13 per cent of the land was owned by them. “Even today the pronoun used for a farmer in our country is ‘he’. It is not gender-neutral. It is the male who dominates the farm sector policy-making mindset,” Mahtab said.
