Gender Perspectives on Climate Change: A Perceptual Analysis of Agricultural Activities among Farmers in India

Abstract

This paper includes a household survey of 240 households from purposively selected 4 districts of Bihar to understand the region and gender specific adaptation strategies of farmers. The result suggests that majority of the men farmers agreed to the statement that climate change is affecting the crop yield, whereas to the same statements, women farmers were undecided. This result can be interpreted as comparatively low level of awareness of women farmers, less extension contacts and also less exposure to digital gadgets like mobile phone, radio from where they can get the weather updates. The findings further shows that the short-term strategies which involved major decision making like early sowing, increased seed rate, bunding, drought tolerant variety, use of farm implements, deep rooted crop, application of urea and long term strategies like tube wells, late harvesting were adopted by men farmers which also tells about the level of awareness and decision making in the household. Therefore, this study put light on the fact that adaptation fund is more utilized if the policy makers make plans more inclusive.