A worker or labourer is a person who is engaged at least for one hour in activities that increase or save income of the household. Under this definition are included both full-time and part-time labour, 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 have showed a downward turn, females have recorded a marginal rise. The reasons include a reduction in household size from decline in fertility, migration of working members to cities and abroad, and increase in school participation in secondary and tertiary level.
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 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 for involvement in childcare. Second, from some hard but cost-effective engagements - for example, in boiling paddy, paddy husking through 'dheki' and other manual work - women have reduced the level of engagement as new technologies have entered into 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 have to be spent. The economic activities were mostly part-time work 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 time from household 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.
As mentioned earlier, a part of the labour force in the age groups 16-25 and 60 and above, have shifted from economic activities. But participation in economic activities as well as duration of work for 41-59 age groups has increased over time. What could be the reasons for this pattern? First, participation in schools and college of 16-25 age groups has increased, thereby reducing participation of young adults in economic activities. Second, men aged 60 and above, particularly from economically better-off households, might have gone for retirement in the wake of improvements in economic conditions. Third, improved health conditions and increased life expectancy might have kept 41-59 age groups in work at an increasing rate. And finally, substitution effect and growing involvement in household works have possibly pushed down the participation rate in economic activities for workers in the 26-40 age groups.
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. The data also shows evidence of the backward bending supply curve of labour.
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 has increased for women, while that of men have decreased over time; (b) 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 has 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 has 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 . These findings carry important implication in the formulation of agricultural policies, especially in employment generation of women.
The writer is a Professor of Economics at Jahangirnagar University.
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