The project was a research study funded by ACIAR with a focus on understanding the role of women in agriculture in the Eastern Gangetic Plains (EGP). When it comes to understanding the role of women in agriculture in the EGP, there appears to be a mismatch between the macro and micro level research findings. The existing literature on this area highlights a consistent de-feminization in the case of India, while the macro level scenario on Nepal and Bangladesh hints at feminization primarily as a response to male-selective outmigration. A number of reasons have been offered for this trend, however, has not been validated at the micro level, and thus how the processes may have worked, if at all, was not clear. Hence, this project aimed to critically revisit the role of women in agriculture in EGP.

Even within the larger scenario of determinization, two points of reorientations of manifestations of gender relations through work :

·      Casual wage work becoming a defining feature in women’s work.

·      Increased (forced) mobility driven by CPR dependent work that is taking poorer women out of the domestic space.