Discrimination of gender in agriculture sector in Andhra Pradesh Narasimham S.1,*, Bhairavamurthy2 1Department of Agricultural Economics, Acharya N.G.R. Agriculture University, Hyderabad-500030, Andhra Pradesh, India 2Department of Economics, Dr S.R.K. Arts College, Yanam-533464, Andhra Pradesh, India *Corresponding author: sabbatinarasimham@rediffmail.com
Online published on 5 January, 2015. Abstract Human resources in an economy constitute a significant input in the production process of goods and services. The study of human resources, their quality and problems is of immense use in manpower planning in both developing as well as developed economies. Due to low employment potential in other sectors; most of the population is forced to be dependent on agriculture. Employment in agriculture is mostly seasonal and intermittent in character. The labourers suffer with seasonal unemployment. During the periods of peak agricultural activity, the demand for labour is high and during the off season they have to face acute unemployment problem. In the areas where multiple cropping is practiced, the labourers get employment throughout the year with minimum period of unemployment. The low wages are responsible for their sub human standard of living. It is highly difficult for an agricultural labourer to make their both ends meet with these low wages. The chronic imbalance between labour supply and complementary resource in agriculture is normally expected to result in fixing up of wages subsistence levels over large parts of the country. Female labour use will be high in case of paddy than male labourers. The intensive and difficult nature of operation in case of sugarcane requires mostly male labour. Since, agricultural sector experiences excessive dependence of population eking out their livelihood. In the absence of alternative work, they joined the ranks of agricultural labour to earn their living. Their low standard of living permits them to be satisfied with subsistence and low wage. Top Keywords Agriculture, agriculture labour, crop wise employment, wage rates, wage defferntials, minimum wages, agriculture co-operatives. Top |