Women's agency and pastoral livelihoods in India: a review

Abstract

The role of women in promoting and sustaining pastoral livelihoods remains an under-researched area across the world. Often, studies discuss pastoralism as a male-oriented enterprise, thus overshadowing or ignoring the part played by women in such livelihood practices. In India, where pastoralism itself is essentially a neglected area of research, such discussions remain even sparse. Pastoral communities depending on migratory livestock rearing practices for their livelihoods exhibit gender-based differences in their everyday life in terms of division of labour, mobility patterns, and rights over resources. Women play different roles and responsibilities at the household and community levels that remain intertwined with their pastoral livelihoods. Drawing from the available literature, we aim to synthesize the situated agency of these pastoral women in their everyday lives and their collective activism in the face of mainstream models of development. We engage in a thorough analysis from a gender perspective in this paper to discuss specific cases of Indian women and their influence on pastoral livelihoods and interests. We aim to reframe and undo the invisibility women in pastoralism have faced thus far by re-telling their stories from a gendered perspective.