Pastoral Women in the Himalayas: A Case Study of the Gaddi Community

Abstract

This paper examines the lives and labor of pastoral women among the Gaddi community of the western Himalayas, focusing on Chamba and adjoining districts in present-day Himachal Pradesh. While Gaddi pastoralism is often narrated through the movements of male shepherds and flocks across summer dhars and winter bans, the work of women sustains this economy’s ecological and social rhythms. Building on environmental history, political ecology, and feminist scholarship, the study situates women’s labor within layered regimes of property, access, and governance from the late nineteenth century to the present. It argues that colonial forestry regimes, justified by an ideology of “improvement,” transformed commons into regulated reserves, intensifying the time and risk burdens borne by women. The post-Independence state both widened opportunities (roads, schools, political reservation) and renewed constraints (hydropower corridors, conservation closures), producing a contradictory modernity in which Gaddi women navigate expanded public roles and persistent ecological labor. Drawing on the works of Thomas R. Metcalf, Mahesh Rangarajan, Bina Agarwal, K. Sivaramakrishnan, Ramachandra Guha, Chetan Singh, and contemporary reports and policy documents, the paper develops a historically grounded portrait of gendered mobility, subsistence, care work, and political voice. It concludes by highlighting emergent pressures—climate variability, conservation enclosures, hydropower infrastructures—and argues for policy grounded in gender-sensitive rights and participatory pastoral governance(Metcalf; Rangarajan; Agarwal).