Historically, highland pastoralism (Doksa) has been the predominant means of livelihoods in Zanskar which is primarily based on transhumant practices and entails cyclical migration of cattle from lowlands to highlands for judicious exploitation of seasonal reachable pastures at high altitudes in the Himalayas. This study demonstrates the Doksa activities, consequential fatigue and drudgery and gender discriminations of the pastoralist women and strategic interventions to solve the problems. Pastoralist women undoubtedly perform all the Doksa activities including milking twice a day, churning yoghurt, making and packing butter, drying chhurpey, collecting dung and making dung cakes etc. Due to the lack of modern techniques, the pastoral women are still sticking to their traditional methods for performing the job. The works they accomplish are cumbersome, back-breaking, repetitive, manual, laborious, time-consuming and non-remunerative to efforts made. Introduction of improved cattle production technologies and working methods can minimize their drudgery by saving time and energy. The pastoralist women are worst affected by acute poverty, gender inequality, drudgery and socioeconomic discriminations. The Doksa based livelihoods are threatened by increasingly hostile environmental conditions due to heavy pressure over pasture resources, underprivileged socioeconomic empowerment and lack of alternative income-generating activities. Overcoming unfair patriarchal family structures, unfavourable attitudes and related inequality against women remains a challenge. Strengthening women’s role in decision-making, supporting women‘s empowerment in cattle production system and creating income-generating activities are the major aspects which needs to be addressed for socioeconomic improvement and livelihood diversification of pastoral women and hence, some policy perspectives needs to be implicated.
Doksa, pastoral women, drudgery, women empowerment, livelihood, Zaskar, Ladakh
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