Drudgeries and Occupational Health Hazards Perceived by the Women Farmers in Central zone of Uttar Pradesh

Study was carried out to assess the perception of women farmers regarding extent and magnitude of drudgery and gender gap experienced by them in central zone of U.P. Investigation was carried by eight KVKs Kanpur Dehat, Kannauj, Auraiya, Jhansi, Unnao, Pratapgarh, Kaushambi and Raibareilly. Further, from the selected KVKs’ operational areas, two villages from each KVK in which KVK was implementing the activities since last two years were selected. Twenty farm women/village from each enterprise i.e. crop production, livestock and post harvest were selected for the study purpose comprising total sample of 960 respondents from 16 selected villages. It was found out that all the respondents possessed sickle (100%), hand hoe and hand plough (Phawda) followed by Khurpi (46.88%) and chaff cutter (29.175). Very few of them possessed improved tools like hand ridger, maize sheller, fertilizer sprayer and fruit harvester. Farm implements like Engine (9.17%) and tractor+ trolly (8.75%) was kept by very limited number of respondents. Most of the respondents (68%) opined that these tools and implements are not comfortable to them, needs change (56%), are heavy (79%) and cause discomfort/ Injury during farm/ allied activities (100%). High extent of discomfort/ Injury Faced by them in various farm/ allied activities were in transplanting (75.24%), harvesting (65.25%), weeding (57.41%), cleaning of fields (55.21%) and in threshing (35.89%). Various types of health problems experienced were numbness in feets/hands, back ache, head ache and pain in knees, shoulders and other joints by all the respondents (100%) followed by blisters on palm by 84.68 per cent, skin cuts/ fungal infection and allergies by 84 per cent of the respondents. Based on the above findings, the research based technologies were selected for the KVKs in central Uttar Pradesh for conducting on farm trials on hanging type grain cleaner with sack holder, sugarcane stripper, cono weeder, rice transplanter, tubular maize sheller, rotary maize sheller, groundnut stripper, standing type groundnut decorticator, sitting type groundnut decorticator, twin wheel hoe, Naveen dibbler, rotary dibbler and hand ridger for reducing the drudgery of women farmers.