6.11 Equity in Wages :

Evidence from all sources indicates clearly that womens wages are on the average 50% less than what men earn. This difference is the result of cultural, administrative and traditional factors, some of which are described below :

- The work that men traditionally perform is considered to be "skilled" and "heavy". Even the Department of Agriculture considers womens work in Agriculture "unskilled". What is more striking and of concern is that even women consider men’s' work as more skillful. The study "Gender in PIDOW" quotes a womens group as saying "our men spend a lot more time in the fields and this itself gives them greater exposure to gain skill".

Further analysis indicates a complex set of inter-acting factors which influence this disparity. Activities can be grouped into three categories according to certain features that each group has in common :

- Traditional activities like agriculture and animal husbandry which are undertaken every year and take up a comparatively longer period have an impact on life throughout the year. It is these activities with which village life is intrinsically inter-woven; religious, cultural and family practices are largely conditioned by these activities.

In these activities the roles of men and women are more clearly demarcated than in others; when labour in such activities is hired out, the roles and rewards of women tend to be conditioned by their status in traditional society; and since traditional society tends to marginalise women and give them lesser importance, atleast as far as their roles in society are concerned, their contribution to these activities is also given less value. The intervention in PIDOW did not increase these activities to any great extent, nor did it attempt to change the roles that women played in traditional activities; the introduction of threshing machines did have an unintended impact by decreasing the work load of women.

- In the second group fall activities which are traditional but are not regular and do not play a major role in the life of society and the family; examples ofsuch activities are water and soil conservation measures. These sporadic activities are not implemented by all the families; the degree of involvement of each family in these activities depends largely on the type and extent of land, potential for harvesting silt, the degree of initiative and hard work that the family has and the opportunities for alternative wage employment. The PIDOW Project raised the level of involvement in these activities to a very large extent. Analysis of the wage pattern during these activities indicates that women did receive a higher wage proportionate to the work they did when compared to what they received in agriculture. The distinction however, between skilled work done by men and unskilled work undertaken by women continued to operate, resulting in women receiving lower wages than men.

- In the third category of activities fall a few which are relatively recent. A good example is the forestry nursery raising programme. Decentralised nurseries run by groups of women have emerged all over the Project area. Many of these nurseries earn an income by selling saplings which they had maintained for periods of three to six months. Experience in Gulbarga indicates that in such recent activities, women play a relatively dominant role, both because these activities are suited to women and also because they are not conditioned by traditional practices. Studies indicate that in nursery raising, women’s wages are comparatively higher than what men earn.

The study "Gender in PIDOW" arrives at similar conclusions. It relates the "resource involvement" of men and women with the economic compensation they receive in three areas, namely Forestry, Water and Soil Conservation and Agriculture. The study does not define the indicators it includes under "resource involvement" and what standard it has used to assess each indicator; therefore it has to be taken in a general way. The study concludes that in the activities of women related to agriculture which are considered to be unskilled, their resource involvement amounts to 60% compared to the contribution of men which is only 40%, the economic compensation of women however is only 40% of the total while that of men is 60%.

In activities related to Water and Soil Conservation where womens work is still considered unskilled while men are the "Key players", women’s and men’s' contribution in terms of resource involvement is equal; the economic compensation women receive however is only 40% of the total whereas men receive 60%.

In the case of forestry there is a significant change. Women have been identified as the "key players" in this sector. The "resource involvement" of men is 30% and that of women in 70%. The economic compensation of women is 70% and that of men is 30%. This does present an equitable picture.