A STUDY OF SOCIO-ECONOMIC PROFILE OF WOMEN AGRICULTURAL LABOUR IN PUNJAB

The present study was undertaken to examine the socio-economic profile, employment and wages of women agricultural labour in Punjab. Multistage random sampling technique was used to form a representative sample of 96 women agricultural labour, covering six villages, three blocks and three districts from three agro-climatic zones of Punjab for analysis. The study revealed that majority of the women agricultural labourers belonged to Punjab while remaining one-third were the migrants mainly from the Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. The mean age of women agricultural labour in Punjab was 33.29 years and most of them belonged to schedule caste. Majority of them were married, illiterate, having owned and pucca house and had belonged to the medium sized nuclear families. The mean family income of women agricultural labour came out to be around '63620 per annum whereas, mean wage income of a woman agricultural labour was '33242 per annum. It was observed that during the lean period, the wage rate was '171.67 per day while in the peak period it was '191.67 per day per woman in Punjab. The results revealed that during the lean and peak period, the wage income was '1924.30 and '3954.50 per month per woman respectively. The mean debt on the family of the respondents was '6666.67 and was mainly availed from non-institutional sources.