Gender inequality in wage employment in rural Odisha: Some micro-evidence

The advancement in agriculture brought about considerable changes in the availability of work, nature and type of work and earnings of male and female agricultural labourers. This paper applies t-test to find out the degree of gender inequality in wages and employment in one irrigated and another contiguous non-irrigated village in tribal-dominated Kalahandi district of Odisha. The results indicate that while availability of irrigation reduces the gender gap in employment; mechanisation certainly reduces the employment potential of women labourers. Though women are more productive than men in jobs which have been traditionally allotted to them such as transplanting and weeding, receive significantly lower wages than their male counterparts for such work. However, the emergence of contract labour engagement in harvesting has enabled women labourers to earn wages at par with their men counterparts.