A worker or labourer is defined as a person who is engaged at least for one hour in activities that increase or save income for the household. Under this definition are included both full-time and part-time labourers whereas in the discussion on occupational status we generally deal with only full-time workers. Under this new definition, the number of working members per household in rural areas has declined from 2.65 to 2.59 over time. But while male working members showed a downward trend, female working members recorded a marginal rise. The reasons for the decline in the numbers of workers include, inter alia, a reduction in household size following a fall in fertility, migration of working members to cities and abroad, and increase in school participation at secondary and tertiary levels.
It also appears that over time, the duration of economic labour performed by an average worker has been reduced substantially from about four-fifths to three-fourths. This happened due to a reduction in labour force participation by men with the share of women remaining almost the same. Two factors could be adduced to this trend: first, men have growingly been attracted to domestic activities, and hence their relative contribution to economic activities has gone down. Second, the subsistence pressure of the households in the past forced young and old labour force to engage in economic activities and for those in active age groups to put in longer hours to earn a subsistence wage. In recent years, the subsistence pressure has been eased somewhat with improvements in poverty situation and hence with economic solvency the poverty- induced longer work hours have been reduced. The old retire if they can afford, and the young go to schools abandoning child labour. Â
It is interesting to note that the duration of work effort has declined for both male and female labour force - from 9 hours/day to 8.5 hours/day in recent times. The change is remarkable in the case of women workers as they put in 8.35 hours now compared to 9.20 hours in the eighties. This means, in the past, women used to work for more hours (in domestic and economic activities together) than men; now men work more than women. The 'magical' change in the duration of labour for women deserves an explanation. First, the reduction in fertility rate has saved for women time from involvement in childcare. Second, from some hard but cost-effective engagements - for example, in boiling paddy, paddy husking through 'dheki' and other manual works - women have reduced the level of engagement as new technologies have entered the market. Now mobile threshers are at the doorstep to substitute women's' efforts for milling rice early in the morning with 'dheki'. Rice mills for parboiling of paddy and processing of rice are easily accessible. The house floors are paved, and hence women do not have to spend too much time for clearing dusts.
For men, economic activities have become more full-time pursuits where, for example, 7.7 to 7.8 hours/day has to be spent. The economic activities were mostly part-time works for women two decades ago. It has remained part-time even now, but the duration of labour has increased from 1.9 hours/day to 2.3 hours/day recently. It implies that women have got the opportunity to divert a part of the time from households to economic activities with the passage of time. They are now giving more time to homestead-based activities such as livestock and poultry rearing, vegetable gardening in the homestead or pond aquaculture or social forestry.
A more useful insight into the issue of labour force participation can be derived when work effort is related to the educational status of the worker. First, the number of working members has increased for all groups in the scale of educational status, excepting the group that did not have formal schooling (illiterate). This implies that illiterate households have relatively high dependency ratio. Second, the participation in economic activities has increased for workers attending or passing secondary level; but decreased for the groups with lower educational levels (illiterate or those attending only primary schools). For relatively better educated workers, the duration of work has increased over time. The educated men (of secondary level of education) are increasingly giving more time to domestic activities that were previously done by paid domestic helpers, especially by women. We can, perhaps, mark this trend as a new dimension in the arena of our social development.
To shed further light on this issue of participation in labour market, we can bring in land ownership pattern to the discourse. In comparable periods, working members per household increased for functionally landless and marginal households, while the same decreased for small, medium and large land-size groups. In the reference year, four-fifths of the working force from landless, marginal and small farm households was engaged in economic activities. The share was a little over three-fourths for the medium and large land size groups. But, by now, the proportion of working population engaged in economic activities almost equalled across farm size groups. The fall in the durations of both domestic and economic works across farm-size groups, probably, suggests that working members of households substituted labour for leisure over the periods under consideration.
The following points are noted from the analysis of nature of work and gender roles in labour use: (a) participation as well as duration in economic activities have increased for women, while those of men have decreased over time; (b) pervasive exit of men from agriculture and a leaning towards non-agricultural activities are in evidence over time; (c) participation of women in agricultural labour market decreased, perhaps, due to a decline in subsistence pressure; (d) both in terms of the proportion of the labour force and duration of work, increasing attraction of non-agricultural activities pushed back agricultural engagements and (e) the role of agriculture in employment generation of men diminished substantially, while the decline was marginal in the case of women. This finding carries important implication in the formulation of agricultural policies, especially in employment generation of women.
The writer is a Professor of Economics at Jahangirnagar University.
abdulbayes@yahoo.com