- Around ninety per cent of women workers in India are engaged in the unorganized sector. Of these over 80 per cent are in agriculture and allied occupations.
- In the organised sector women constitute only 13.3 per cent of all employees.
- In the public sector, they account for 11 per cent of total employment and in the private sector for 17.8 per cent.
- Among rural woman workers, 87 per cent are employed in agriculture as labourers and cultivators.
- Women workforce outside the four walls is larger in rural areas than in urban India.
- Women are responsible for 50 per cent of food production in the developing world.
- Women outnumber men as agricultural labourers.
- An estimated 20 per cent of rural households are de facto female headed, due to widowhood, desertion, or male outmigration.
- The poorer the family, the greater the involvement of women in agricultural activities.
According to the census reports, there is an increased participation of rural women in economic activities besides doing household duties. Though participation of women in agriculture contribute a lot for the economic growth and progress of the country, their problems are shown least concern. Woman's role has biologically and socially combined to create four distinct functions that of mother, wife, homemaker and worker. The role of worker is equally important as that of the other three roles. But her role as an active worker-producer is rarely acknowledged though it is significant for the family's survival. These unknown and unacknowledged beings are responsible to keep the economy at a steady pace and helped the nation to occupy a significant place in the world.
The rural women are usually employed in most arduous field operations like sowing behind the plough, transplanting, weeding, harvesting, threshing and agro-processing. It may be seen that women are also employed in other field operations in horticulture, agro-forestry, animal husbandry, dairying and fisheries. These sectors are least mechanized in India. Nursery raising, tree planting, feeding, care and cleaning of animals shed, milking, dairy product preparation, fish processing, pit digging in agro-forestry etc. are mostly performed by women.
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