‘The Hindu's World Of Women 2023 Award’ In Agriculture And Rural Development Goes To Nandini Azad

On March 31, 2023, in Chennai, Dr. Nandini Azad, President of Working Women's Forum (WWF) - Indian Cooperative Network for Women (ICNW), was awarded ‘The Hindu - World of Women Award’ for Excellence in Agriculture and Rural Development. This prestigious honour recognizes her outstanding achievements and contributions in these fields.

During her speech at the event, Dr. Azad presented statistics regarding women farmers in India. She emphasized how landless women farmers have been able to become owners of the land thanks to the inputs provided by WWF-ICNW.

She stated that almost 75% of full-time workers in Indian agriculture are women, but less than 8% of them own land. To tackle the root causes of gender inequality in agriculture, the Working Women's Forum (WWF) - Indian Cooperative Network for Women (ICNW) has provided financial inclusion and capacity building, resulting in almost 34% of women farmers now having land titles.

Due to exposure, training, and mass meetings, the personal ability and self-confidence of women farmers have strengthened, enabling them to make decisions on crop selection, marketing strategies, and profit generation.

Organizations led by Dr. Nandini Azad have succeeded in bringing together 600,000 women members from four southern Indian states, namely Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, and Telangana, covering a vast array of 280 occupations.

The voices of impoverished women are now being heard on global platforms, as they are represented by board members at the World Farmers Organisation - a large independent voice of farmers - and the International Raiffeisen Union, the oldest cooperative union. These women are the only ones to have been elected as board members in 50 years.

Furthermore, their achievements have been recognized by the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women and the Commission on Social Development, and they have been invited to attend major UN HQ events as the only cooperative representatives in the last two to three years. As the global facilitator of the working group on cooperatives in WFO, Dr. Azad represents poor women farmers' cooperatives worldwide.

During her address, Dr. Nandini Azad expressed her appreciation for the International Network for Women in Cooperatives, which she sees as a beacon of hope for promoting global awareness and the enforcement of conventions that aim to restore gender balance and encourage gender networking within cooperatives. She also noted the success of new-age women-only cooperatives that serve as trendsetters in this regard. 

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