Work Participation of Rural Women in the Third World

Work Participation of Rural Women in the Third World By Bina Agarwal

Presented by Medha Bhattacharjee CIA III14245172/7/2015Medha Bhattacharjee1About the Author and the Article.Economic and political weekly 20 (51/52): A 155-64, 21-28 December 1985.Bina Agarwal is a Professor of Development Economics and Environment at the University of Manchester, UK. Until recently she was Director of the Institute of Economic Growth, Delhi University. Among her best known works isA Field of One's Own : Gender and Land Rights in South Asia(Cambridge University Press, 1994) which was awarded the A.K. Coomaraswamy Book Prize 1996; the Edgar Graham Book Prize 1996.In her latest book,Gender and Green Governance (Oxford University Press 2010), Agarwal explores the impact of women's presence on forest governance and conservation. Nobel Laureate Elinor Ostrom endorses the book as follows: Bina Agarwal has crafted a book of central importance in today's world. With analytical rigour and originality, Agarwal bridges major gaps in our understanding of the difference women can make, when they are actively involved in forest governance.'In 2008, Agarwal received a Padma Shri from the President of India for her contributions to education; and in 2010 the Leontief Prize from Tufts University for advancing the frontiers of economic thought.'

2/7/2015Medha Bhattacharjee2BINA AGARWAL

2/7/2015Medha Bhattacharjee3Third world countriesThe termThird Worldarose during theCold Warto define countries that remained non-aligned with eitherNATO, or theCommunist Bloc. TheUnited States,Western Europeannations and their allies representing theFirst World. TheSoviet Union,China,Cuba, and their allies representing theSecond World. This terminology provided a way of broadly categorizing the nations of the Earth into three groups based on social, political, cultural and economic divisions. The Third World was normally seen to include many countries withcolonialpasts in Africa,Latin America,OceaniaandAsia.2/7/2015Medha Bhattacharjee4Introduction Problems of unemployment, poverty and destitution have long been the stated concerns of development policy in most Third World countries.In many instances these problems are also gender-specific and that any serious attempt to alleviate these conditions will require a particular focus on the women of poor households. Insights into the micro studies have received very little attention and the national level statistics which are considered while framing developmental policies are severally impaired by biases, which leads to an undercounting of women, both as workers and as those available for work. There are also lacunae in data coverage which results in faulty conceptualisation based on which policies are instituted to help the poor are misdirected.2/7/2015Medha Bhattacharjee5Sections in this ArticleSection II: Why there is a need to focus on women separately from men in planning rural employment & income generating schemes and the inaccurate gender-related information can lead to faulty schemes.Section III: Biases in census information. Section IV: Inadequacies in data coverage.Section V: Points to some conceptual biases in data use.Section VI: What can be done?2/7/2015Medha Bhattacharjee6Section II: Need for a Focus on women in development schemes and Data collection.Micro-studies point out the dangers of state sponsored schemes which seek to raise the welfare of poor households, based on limited knowledge of inter-household division of labour and income between women and men, or of women s independent need for employment or economic- earning opportunities.Firstly there is a need to address the coinciding interests of men and women. Secondly in many cultures the programmes for development of agricultural sectors are planned and these new information and practices are made available only to the men.Thirdly large number of households have women who are the sole bread- winners but their data is fragmented.

2/7/2015Medha Bhattacharjee7Inadequate information is not the sole cause of misconceived income generating schemes, or the failure to pay attention to questions of womens poverty and unemployment. The gap between the policy and its implication can be very crucial. The data available serves as an input into policy making in Third World countries. Therefore any data inadequacies has serious repercussions on the effectiveness of economic resources allocated to development schemes, which are derived from seriously misconceived notions about the role of women in regards to their employment and income needs.This data shortcomings concerning to rural women and their work stems from the method of data collection, the concepts and definitions used and the lastly the analysis of the data. Example : womens work is always discounted on a Priori assumptions of their lower productivity relative to mens.2/7/2015Medha Bhattacharjee8Section III: Biases in Data collection A count of those not working but available 'for work would be needed to measure the number of involuntarily unemployed women. This gives an idea of female underemployment. The information together with some general characteristics of women workers and those available would be necessary for formulating policies to provide income-earning opportunities.The nature and the sources of biases in the existing data which seriously affect heir accuracy and usefulness.

Respondent and Enumerate Biases.Definitional Biases.Changes in Definitions and problems of compatibility.Measurement of female unemployment.

2/7/2015Medha Bhattacharjee9Section IV: Coverage InadequaciesThe existing macro-data sources are severely limited in their ability to provide details about the characteristic of employed and unemployed women, such as their status as household heads, the number of dependents they have, their economic status and agrarian class , their levels if skills for which they will work for.Family headship is an existing feature of many census in Third World countries the information is often not available in published census data and if available it is distorted by cultural and definitional basis.The census data tend to under numerate female-headed households.The identification of female household heads and their economic means is clearly important for planning appropriate income generating schemes.The NSS data which consider the time intensity of work effort do not adequately capture this dimension.In this context an important additional dimension is the possible difference between different socio-economic classes in the sexual division of labour.

2/7/2015Medha Bhattacharjee10Section V: Some conceptual Biases in Data Use. The available data which is used in economic analysis reflects a male bias.Female labour is assumed to have less efficiency than male labour. Sometime women are paid 3/4th of what men are paid. Wages paid are not necessarily indicative of differences in productivity.Sex-typing of tasks is noticed, where there is a predominance of women in certain tasks and men in others. Example: cotton-picking and harvesting of other crops.

2/7/2015Medha Bhattacharjee11Section VI : What can be done?Urgent need for taking corrective measures in the data gathering process and for re-examining analytical concepts as they relate to women, to overcome their shortcomings.A specific attempt can be made to enlist female enumerators and to seek out female respondents.Appropriate modifications of the definitions adopted to identify women who are employed or unemployed.A sounder empirical base for assessing time contribution of rural women in the agrarian economy is needed.A research on understanding the effect of technological innovations on women belonging to different socio- economic classes. As some inventions makes life simpler for certain section of women and on the other deprives the other from their crucial source of livelihood.Regional specific research that could focus on the specific needs.

2/7/2015Medha Bhattacharjee12ELA RAMESHBHATT ( Founder of SEWA)

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THANK YOU2/7/2015Medha Bhattacharjee14