In South Asia rural and agricultural mechanization
has perhaps the greatest impact on women's lives - for
good and bad. Much research has gone into finding machine
and tool technologies to better the lives of rural farm
women. Most of the technologies have been targeted at
at women's traditional roles, e.g. cooking (above photo).
food processing, etc. Tractors and larger implements
and machinery, even in the west , have been the pervue
of men while smaller tools and implements with women.
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New
Research Paper - Empowerment of Women through external (Project)
intervention: Case Study of Women Two-Wheel Tractor Operators
- recently posted on Women Organizing for Change in Agriculture
and NRM's (WOCAN's) website the paper is based on our earlier
work in popularizing the Chinese two-wheel tractor where we
attempted to break the above roles as is happening in urban
areas with more and more women drivers of taxis and tempos.
The field case studies of the individual lives of three women
who were trained as two-wheel tractor operators and who, thus
had attempted to take up, a new gender role: that of plowing.
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