The article examines the issue of unpaid work and sharing of work between male and female family members in cultivating households on the basis of a field survey of 240 farm households in two districts in the agriculturally developed western region of Uttar Pradesh. The study reveals that women’s total workload was much higher than that of men. The pattern of work and time use have hardly changed. The burden of domestic work and care basically falls on women of the household. The participation of men in these activities is nominal. Women’s contribution to farm activities is significant, and further, they do most of the work in animal husbandry. Consequently, they have much less time for leisure and sleep. Our study highlights the permanence of traditional intra-household gender disparities in the distribution of work within the household. These values are transferred to the next generation as young girls are expected to help their mothers in carrying out domestic duties and care work, while boys have no such obligation.

The role of women in Indian agriculture has been highlighted in a large number of studies.However, there are only a few studies which highlight the role of household female workers in agricultural activities on their family farms. Female family workers constitute a special category of labour who are called to join in agricultural work on farm whenever demand for labour increases. They are, thus, a flexible source of labour supply. Their work is seasonal and intermittent and remains unpaid and hence unrecognized. Most of the studies of female labour in agriculture were undertaken in the early decades of the green revolution. There are few recent field studies of women participation in agriculture in India.Moreover, the earlier studies were mostly confined to wheat and rice growing regions and did not look at the labour intensive commercial crops like sugarcane. The present study seeks to fill up these gaps in literature by particularly focusing upon the role of household female workers in an agriculturally developed region specializing in sugarcane cultivation.The study is based upon an intensive field survey of 240 farm households located in the agriculturally developed western region of Uttar Pradesh, the most populous state of India. The study reveals that the contribution of women to agricultural work in the study area which specializes in sugarcane cultivation is higher than their contribution revealed by earlier studies in wheat growing northern states of Punjab and Haryana, but it is lower than their involvement in the rice growing regions of south India. The study also confirms the inverse relationship between size of holding and use of female labour observed in the earlier studies. Our findings about the work segregation by sexes are also in line with the findings of the earlier studies. The study stresses that women workers in agriculture should be given due recognition in public policy to reduce the gender gap in agriculture.

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