Employment Status of Women in Rural Punjab: Dwindling Trends

Considerable participation of women in socio-economic, political and cultural set-up of the society is the pre requisite for the development of an economy. It is the fact that the economies which used the growth of agricultural sector as a base for their development path towards industrial and service sector growth shifted their surplus labour from agricultural sector to these sectors. Punjab has a different story regarding rural female employment. After green revolution, the state recorded tremendous agricultural growth. But this achievement in agriculture did not contribute in terms of female participation in economic activities and even this remarkable growth upto 1980’s in agriculture sector brought a sharp decline of female work participation in farm-sector. In the nineties when major economic reforms were introduced in Indian economy, the major sectoral shift was noticed in employment which in result brought a rapid shrink in the number of agricultural workers in the state. Census 2011 figures present a gloomy situation for the gender equality in work participation in Punjab. Punjab continued backward for providing equal employment opportunities for the women. High mechanisation of agriculture and low growth of a non-agriculture sector made the situation worse for women to get employment. It is high time for a gender sensitive employment generation strategy to secure the socioeconomic interests of females in the state.