Rural Employment Prospects
In rural areas, the ability to work land often depends on physical strength, so gender differences in agricultural employment vary regionally as the predominant type of agricultural activity varies.
If women have less economic opportunities in a region, the prevalence of daughter aversion and son preference increases.
A study conducted in West Godavari in Andhra Pradesh found that in rural areas, among the literate labor force, women had significantly higher rates of unemployment than men regardless of the level of education (Tilak 109). Thus, difference in educational attainment does not have the conventionally expected effect on labor-market gender discrimination.
*Image: Smiling dalit and adivasi (scheduled caste) women in a tribal village, Umaria district, Madhya Pradesh, India.
*Image: Women working in a plantation north of Chapora river (Goa, India).
Credit: Dominik Hundhammer, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0
*Image: Smiling dalit and adivasi (scheduled caste) women in a tribal village, Umaria district, Madhya Pradesh, India.
*Image: In a field of Danapur, Bihar, India, day laborers harvests pulses with their family members.
Credit: Melissa Cooperman / IFPRI, Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
*Image: Smiling dalit and adivasi (scheduled caste) women in a tribal village, Umaria district, Madhya Pradesh, India.
*Image: Women farmers at work in their vegetable plots near Kullu town, Himachal Pradesh, India.
Credit: mrjohncummings, CIAT, NP Himachal Pradesh, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0
“If we are going to see real development in the world then our best investment is WOMEN!”
-Desmond Tutu
Why Does It Matter?
Women’s labor-market opportunities are important because women in the workforce, and their level of education, can drastically alter societal perspectives regarding gender preference.
Research has shown that regions with higher rates of paid employment for women also report a reduction in stated son preference for women who are either illiterate or who have not gone to school, despite no such reduction for literate women with secondary or tertiary schooling. In other words, labor market participation has a more significant positive effect on women who have not gone to school than on women who have completed high school or college. For this reason, simply increasing access to education will not necessarily reduce gender discrimination because in rural areas, education guarantees neither employment nor a reduction in son preference.
Employment opportunities are perhaps ultimately more important than educational attainment in the context of gender discrimination, although education will still improve conditions and bias. Providing labor market opportunities and economic mobility for uneducated women in rural India will have a substantial effect on son preferences.
Gender inequalities and marginalization of women in the labor-market in rural India are increasingly apparent in agriculture, as demonstrated both economically and socially. As socioeconomic mobility for men increases naturally with globalization and urbanization, women do not enjoy the same mobility. They constitute a growing majority of the agricultural labor force, yet at lower wages and harsher conditions than men in the past. So while men are leaving the agricultural sector in rural India, women are filling men’s places for lower wages despite doing the same work.
Female child labor also limits adult women’s employment in agriculture. For instance, rural cottonseed farms in India employ young girls in a much higher proportion than adult women for certain jobs because girls can be made to work long hours at lower wages. Employers often attempt to maximize efficiency of crop production, and employing female youth is the easiest way to maximize profit.
Women’s limitations and opportunities in the labor market are partially governed by a combination of wage differences, perceived efficiency, and misguided beliefs about women, all of which stem from conventional societal perspectives on gender roles.
