Gender Disparity: Its Manifestations, Causes and Implications

B. The Dynamics of Female Male Wages Inequality and Sex Ratio

1. 
   Economic Emancipation of Women: Agricultural Labourers
   

In Indian states including Kerala, women’s economic contribution is seriously undervalued even in the family, nay the greater society. Part of the answer may be found in the underreporting of women’s work in official data. The Census of India defines work as “any productive work for which remuneration is paid and is market related.” If a person has worked for more than 183 days, then s/he is considered a main worker and otherwise, a marginal worker. All unpaid productive work that does not enter the market is frequently excluded from the definition. An indeed large number of women engaged in production on family farms/firms and home fronts, therefore, get excluded. Moreover, due to social taboo, or tradition, or cultural orthodoxy, women report themselves as ‘housewife’. This category is included in the ‘non-workers’ list in Census. This essentially means that work participation rates (WPR) generally underreport women’s engagement in and contribution to economic activities. The main point, above all, is that by denying their earnings from actual works rendered for the family, women are forced to forgo economic power, which determines the role of a person in family decision. Participation of women in higher levels of elected bodies such as Parliament and the Legislative Assembly is quite dismal in India.

We are emphasizing on AL, among others, particularly because unlike other occupations agricultural wage rates are available separately for male and female workers and their share in Indian population is quite substantial. Further, these people do not have any social security; neither do they belong to the purview of organized labour laws to which we are accustomed. Table 4 presents the proportion of agricultural labourers, male and female, rural and urban, in 1991 and 2001 across the states of India. Where are these misfortunate women concentrated? How are they living? Is there any relation between male female proportions and level of development? Has any good fortune accrued to them in post-reform period? Let us have a brief glance.

First, agricultural labourers still remain as the largest single class of Indian population in terms of occupational division: the percentage fell from about 26% in 1991 to 20.3% in 2001 Census at the all-India level. In rural India, it still remains as high as 26.4% in 2001. Major states of India have very still large percentage of AL: e.g., 46.2% in Bihar, 41.4% in AP, 36.4% in TN, 33.3% in Maharashtra, 27.6% in WB; on the lower side, 6.9% in Rajasthan, 12.8% in Haryana, 15.8% in Kerala, 18.1% in UP and 18.8% in Punjab. It is therefore clear that any all-India level analysis would inevitably fail to reveal the extreme features of male female wage inequality of this class of vulnerable women.

What about the share of female AL across the states? As obvious from Table 4, share of female AL is 35.6% in 2001, which was as high as 48.5% in just a decade ago (1991). Beyond the all-India level, state wise CV has almost remained stagnant around 76% in post-reform decade. In many states, more than 30% of rural females earn their livelihood from this deprived occupation, whereas in some states, the corresponding percentage is more than 40%, and in one (Bihar) it is more than 60%. The sequence of the worst states in 2001 is as follows: Bihar (62.7 female as against 42.7% male), AP (53.6% as against 34.2% male), TN (46.3% as against 36% male), Maharashtra (42.7% as against 27.6% male), Karnataka (40.4% as against 20% male), Orissa (37.2% as against 23% male), Gujarat (34.7% as against 23.3% male), MP (32.6% versus 22%) and WB (30% versus 27%).

It is all too known that any disparity in wage earning of female agricultural labourers would inevitably affect the children of a substantially large community who are the major source of supply of child labour in India. Seasonal nature of their job makes them frequent candidates below the poverty line; also, in most of these families, the male earnings generally wasted in local alcoholic market, while female earnings feed the family members (Corroborated by Ghosh et al. 2007-09).

Finally, as in proportion of AL, the CVs of real AW for both female and male across the states have been continuously rising, and this disparity has become intensified during the post-reform period. So in terms of earnings of the most vulnerable class of population in Indian states, there are symptoms of movement away from gender equality in recent period. It must be noted here that sheer lack of district-wise information for AW makes it difficult to relate wage inequality with district level gender disparity.