Farm Women and Related Work Task Load

In developing nations, gender norms dictate that women are expected to be largely responsible for domestic work. Women are still predominantly responsible for domestic and care work, despite rising female involvement rates in the workforce and significant contributions from women to economic growth and gross domestic product (GDP) globally. Poor mental health among women in low- and middle-income nations may be influenced by high work demands, particularly in rural areas where women are more likely to engage in labour-intensive unpaid employment. Women shoulder excessive burden of unpaid work with more traditional gender role attitudes. Rural women often encounter conflicting demands from their agricultural work and household work such as long and irregular working hours, physically demanding tasks, and unpredictable seasonal demands. It was observed that agricultural work was manually doing most of the agricultural operations. The role demands of farm women put them under heavy pressure requiring work-family balance. The current study was designed to study work demands of farm women, nature of work and type of work regarding household work, farm work and livestock work in Haryana, through agro climatic zones. To draw a representative sample, eight villages from four districts (Two districts from each agro climatic zone) were taken randomly. From each village data was collected from 25 respondents. Therefore, the study concluded that half of the respondents to cent percent respondents were doing all the activities related to family responsibilities as their day-to-day routine work in both zones. Most of the agricultural activities related to manual operations were carried out by the majority of respondents while participation of respondents was very low in activities related to buying and selling such as buying equipment or selling production in both zones. Medium level of task load was found in maximum number of respondents.