Ergonomic Assessment Of Fuel Wood Carrying To Mitigate Drudgery Among Rural Women

Abstract

Women are the focal point of every family and women folk in rural areas spent newlinemost of their time in meeting the fundamental needs of the family such as preparation newlineof food, collection of fire wood, fetching water, cleaning home, bearing children and newlinecaring for dependents. Among these fuel wood collection and carrying is one of the newlineprime activity in the local area of the community. The responsibility of obtaining fuel newlinewood for cooking and water heating often from long distance with heavy load, is almost newlineunavoidable task performed invariably by the rural women. The demand for fuel wood newlineis determined mainly by socio economic status of the family, population growth, newlineaccessibility, affordability and availability. Due to non-availability fuel wood within the newlinevillages or in the nearby places, women have to walk for miles on wavy path to collect newlinefire wood and full fill the household demands to maintain the family livelihood security. newlineThe study was conducted in five taluks of Dharwad district, comprising of 250 rural newlinewomen and sub sample of 30 women respondents who spend most of their time in newlinecollection and carrying of fuel wood were selected for intervention study. Multistage newlinesampling technique was used to select the sample for the study. The intervention was newlinecarried out by introducing head load manager (Improved method) to mitigate work load newlineand drudgery perception among rural women. The results revealed that, higher newlinepercentages of the respondents in the study area were belonged to poor socio economic newlinestatus group and they are regularly involved in fuel wood collection and carrying newlineactivity. Further the readings of heart rate, grip strength, rate of perceived exertion, newlinepostural discomfort and musculo-skeletal pains were recorded. The same procedure was newlinefollowed for traditional and improved (Head load manager) method. As per the newlinefindings of the physiological parameters of the respondents in traditional and improved newlinemethod (Head load manager), the drudgery perception, physiological cost of work, rate newlineof perceived exertion