Occupational stress of tribal women engaged in agricultural activities in Kandhamal district of Odisha

Agriculture which comes under the purview of the informal sector in which, Indian rural women strive to be represented as the face of Agriculture. Rural Woman is the backbone of agricultural workforce but worldwide her hard work has mostly been underpaid and mostly unpaid. This study is an overview of the role and challenges faced by tribal farm women engaged in farming sector in Odisha. The tribal farm women have not been able to adapt the changes in modern civilization because of their way of life, communal customs, natural environment. Women’s work is both wide-ranging and multifaceted throughout the year and they perform multiple tasks in the sphere of agriculture. Stress becomes risky when it interferes with respondent’s ability to live a normal life over an extended period. It is very difficult for a farm woman to perform agricultural activities and contributing significantly to household livelihoods with high temperature, humidity, noise and smoke as well as in lower illumination level. It also decreases the working efficiency of the performer involved in different activities. Despite their dominance of the labour force, women in India still face extreme disadvantage in terms of pay, land rights, and representation in local farmers’ organizations. Moreover, negative externalities like poor family health and worse educational performance for their children are frequently the consequence of their lack of empowerment. This study was undertaken in four villages of Phiringia and Khajuripada block of Kandhamal district to explore the Occupational stress of tribal women engaged in farming sector. The findings revealed that majority of the tribal farm women i.e., 69.2 per cent had medium level of occupational stress which indicates the role overload, role ambiguity, role conflict, unreasonable group, responsibility for persons, low status, strenuous working conditions and unprofitability etc. Despite these challenges there is a dire need for empowering the tribal women through proper education, trainings, giving access to different women friendly technologies by conducting awareness, intervention and prevention programs about occupational health hazards for tribal farm women.