Women Employment and Food Distribution Aspects in Rural Haryana

A woman allocates her time and energy to food, cooking, and distributing according to the household circumstances and for working women these increases her working hours even more, but she continues to play a significant role in doing household chores and at job outside the home. A survey was carried out to assess the impact of women employment on food distribution system and influence of socioeconomic factors determining regularity in serving meals and level of satisfaction from food availability in rural family through an interview schedule. A total sample of 120 respondents was taken from the four villages from two districts of Haryana i.e. Hisar and Panchkula. The results revealed that 65.83 per cent of the respondents were the in charge for the food distribution in family and 73.33 per cent of them did the main cooking. Results also indicated children were fed meals at first followed by adult male in all nuclear families and in most of joint families meal was first served to elderlies. It was reported that mainly husbands of respondents did daily marketing of food items. In the age of LPG 15.83 per cent respondent still used firewood for cooking because of the non-affordability of gas and 45.17 per cent employed women were investing 4-5 hours daily in cooking. Among 46.67 per cent of the women gets frequently sick due to hectic working hours. Regularity in meals was found significantly associated with socio-economic variables such as occupation and education of the respondents. Family support could definitely help women to pursue the employment without sacrificing or ignoring health by having a hand in household chores especially in joint families and in nuclear families giving them decision making power as it leads to healthy family.