ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the labour, work and the role of women in the Himalayan landscape, particularly the border between Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand. The agrarian labour performed by women is not counted as agriculture, only as supplementary to working the land. Often decisions about agricultural farming both at the family level and the community level are put forward by men or sometimes divinities through rituals both of those who do not participate in the everyday activities of farming. The study unpacks a primary understanding of animal-human and land relations through the labour of women in the remote regions of the Uttarkashi district in the Himalayas. Central to a relationship is the labour of women, who by bringing the leaf litter from the forest and woodlands, then scattering the cow dung on the soil provide the primary energy to the movement of the ecological biomass from the forest and commons to the field. The women's labour is both directly and indirectly related to the sustenance of agrarian activity in what is seen as a cattle-centric practice of agriculture.
