Nature and Extent of Women Employment in Rural Community of Haryana

This study examines the nature and extent of women employment in rural areas. In the contemporary world, women's role is not essentially limited to household chores and farm activities. Over the past decades, globally there is a substantial rise in rate of women education and employment but the proportion of Indian women in work has been declining. This is due to the role of women in home production. Indian women particularly in rural areas, have to play multiple roles such as a participant in labour force for supplementing family income and in addition they have a central role in food chain activities. A survey was carried out to assess the nature and extent of 120 women engaged in four major types of occupations in rural areas of Hisar and Panchkula districts of Haryana. Nature of job, duty hours, wage amount, physical status of job and wage act knowledge were found to be highly significant with the type of employment. Data collected exhibited that all the labourers had a temporary nature of their job contrary to that 10% of the government employees were permanent at their job. More than three fifth of the respondents were earning less than Rs.10, 000 per month whereas only 8.3% respondents were earning more than Rs.30, 000 per month. Out of all the respondents, only 35% had full knowledge of wage act rest had partial or no knowledge. It's very important to enhance the women's work participation in productive employment also additional work burden requires support such as child care facilities to ease other domestic responsibilities which remains with women.