Gender Disparity In Rural Labour Market In Odisha

Abstract

newline Women have always played a crucial role in agricultural production. But most of their contributions go unnoticed and invisible. Women are discriminated in rural labour markets mainly in two ways: paying less to women than their male counterparts for similar work and the other is restricting women to low paid unskilled jobs and denying their access to better-paid jobs. A few specific jobs such as transplanting, weeding is termed as women s jobs and they are paid less than the rates paid to other agricultural operations carried out by men under the pretext that males jobs are non-competing ones. Mostly tedious, boring, monotonous, repetitive, unskilled jobs are allotted to women labourers, which create work fatigue and diseases. Transplantation of seedlings usually performed by women is a tough job. newlineThere are several reasons for such discriminations against female agricultural labourers in terms of wage payments and employment. Some appeal the human capital theory argument that women are unskilled lacks the physical ability, education, training to undertake the jobs that men can perform. Others view the segmentation of the labour market and segregation of women as a capitalist institution and an instrument variable used to dilute the class solidarity of the labourer class. Also due to their role in child-rearing they are not able to provide incessant services to labour markets, they lack bargaining power due to immobility, low literacy level and ignorance. Participation of a woman is strongly associated with her family composition, poverty, caste and social custom. It is also symbolised with several entries and exits which associate with various events in their life cycle such as marriage, childbirth and divorce. Usually, low income, low caste and poor women hire out labour and work in others field on wage payment. newlineIt is very often argued that technological change has a gender equalising effect. With the introduction of High Yielding Varieties of seeds, timely completion of agricultural operations assumes utmost importance and all available labourers are engaged irrespective of sex. However, technical change also induces mechanisation of operations like increased use of a tractor for ploughing and use of harvesters, power threshers and winnowing machines. Men usually operate machines and mechanisation may displace female labour. Thus, technological development can be both a threat and an ally to women in their various roles. Recently due to outmigration of newline2 newlinemale members to urban areas for employment, there has been a feminisation of agriculture. newlineIncreasing female participation in the rural labour market is no doubt a welcome trend. But matter newlinefor concern is that discriminations against women are widely prevalent in the rural labour market newlineand tend to persist. Despite the emphasis on equality of sexes in the Indian Constitution and newlinedifferent legislative enactments, women are still subjected to various discriminatory practices in newlinethe social and economic spheres. newlineTherefore, in the above backdrop, it is essential to examine the extent and nature of gender newlinedisparity in the rural labour markets, most importantly the impacts of agricultural development on newlinethe male-female inequalities in agricultural markets in Odisha. It is also important to unravel the newlinediscriminatory practices against women in the labour market, identify the reasons for such newlinediscrimination and analyse its consequences.