ii) Agricultural and Industrial Sectors

Gender inequalities exist in all sectors. Inequalities are reflected in distribution of women workers in different sectors, across job hierarchies and in wages and earnings between men and women.

In the latter half of the twentieth century there was very little structural change in women’s employment. The proportion of female agricultural workers which was less than one-third of the total workforce in 1951 rose to more than fifty per cent, which means greater dependence on agriculture sector. In 1993-94, as many as 86.2 percent female workers were engaged in the primary sector, which includes agriculture and allied sector such as forestry, livestock etc., in the rural areas. Within agriculture they mostly work as agricultural labourers or cultivators.

The wave of Industrialisation has created more work opportunities for a small section of educated women but at the same time reduced work opportunities for unskilled women workers working in textiles, jute industries etc. As a result, women workers got concentrated in plantations, food products, tobacco and textiles, cane and bamboo work, silk worm, rearing coir products, domestic services, education and health services. The high concentration of women in household industries rather than factory-based production affects their status as workers with no control on their labour and earnings.