{"title":"Climate Change, Agrarian Distress, and the Feminization of Agriculture in South Asia.","authors":"Emily M L Southard, Heather Randell","doi":"10.1111/ruso.12439","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Agrarian distress-the experience wherein sustaining an agricultural livelihood becomes increasingly challenging-is well documented in South Asia. Another regional trend is the feminization of agriculture, or an increase in women's work and decision-making in agriculture. Scholars have recently linked these two phenomena, demonstrating that agrarian distress results in the movement of men out of agriculture, driving women into the sector. Yet what remains underexplored is the relationship between climate change, a contributor to agrarian distress, and the feminization of agriculture. To examine this, we link socioeconomic and demographic data from India, Bangladesh, and Nepal to high-resolution gridded climate data. We then estimate a set of multivariate regression models to explore linkages between recent temperature and precipitation variability from historical norms and the likelihood that a woman works in agriculture. Results suggest that hotter-than-normal conditions in the year prior to the survey are associated with an increased likelihood of working in agriculture among women. This relationship is particularly strong among married women and women with less than a primary education. While more research is needed to fully understand the mechanisms between climate change and the feminization of agriculture, our findings suggest a need for gender-sensitive climate change adaptation strategies.</p>","PeriodicalId":47924,"journal":{"name":"RURAL SOCIOLOGY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.3000,"publicationDate":"2022-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9668104/pdf/nihms-1847047.pdf","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"RURAL SOCIOLOGY","FirstCategoryId":"90","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ruso.12439","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"2022/4/15 0:00:00","PubModel":"Epub","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"SOCIOLOGY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Agrarian distress-the experience wherein sustaining an agricultural livelihood becomes increasingly challenging-is well documented in South Asia. Another regional trend is the feminization of agriculture, or an increase in women's work and decision-making in agriculture. Scholars have recently linked these two phenomena, demonstrating that agrarian distress results in the movement of men out of agriculture, driving women into the sector. Yet what remains underexplored is the relationship between climate change, a contributor to agrarian distress, and the feminization of agriculture. To examine this, we link socioeconomic and demographic data from India, Bangladesh, and Nepal to high-resolution gridded climate data. We then estimate a set of multivariate regression models to explore linkages between recent temperature and precipitation variability from historical norms and the likelihood that a woman works in agriculture. Results suggest that hotter-than-normal conditions in the year prior to the survey are associated with an increased likelihood of working in agriculture among women. This relationship is particularly strong among married women and women with less than a primary education. While more research is needed to fully understand the mechanisms between climate change and the feminization of agriculture, our findings suggest a need for gender-sensitive climate change adaptation strategies.
期刊介绍:
A forum for cutting-edge research, Rural Sociology explores sociological and interdisciplinary approaches to emerging social issues and new approaches to recurring social issues affecting rural people and places. The journal is particularly interested in advancing sociological theory and welcomes the use of a wide range of social science methodologies. Manuscripts that use a sociological perspective to address the effects of local and global systems on rural people and places, rural community revitalization, rural demographic changes, rural poverty, natural resource allocations, the environment, food and agricultural systems, and related topics from all regions of the world are welcome. Rural Sociology also accepts papers that significantly advance the measurement of key sociological concepts or provide well-documented critical analysis of one or more theories as these measures and analyses are related to rural sociology.