Impact of Advanced Transport Machinery for Reducing Drudgery and Work Related Stress of Farm Women

Abstract

Agriculture is the highest employer of women’s labour to the extent of 76% in India. Moreover, farm women are doing arduous field operations along with household chores, mostly using traditional hand tools and gadgets which are the source of drudgery and causes low efficiency of farm women. In this regard based on the feedback received by the farm women an excellent research was conducted. Hence, the emphasis given here to reduce the drudgery among farm women by introducing the women friendly farm equipment, which is especially designed for them. The present study was conducted at village Salakhedi (District-Ujjain) M.P. (India) by covering 30 farm women for assessing the drudgery involved in the farm activity-transport of harvested wheat crop from the field to threshing flour in 2012-13 and 2013-14. A specially women friendly multipurpose trolly was designed and developed by the Krishi Vigyan Kendra, (RVSKVV) Ujjain (M.P.). The different parameters like drudgery involved in the selected activity, perceived exertion, difficulty, muscular problems etc. were studied. Three treatments were selected for the assessing data T₁, T₂ and T₃. The results indicated that T₃ (with trolly) technology reduced the drudgery by 12% as compare to the T₁. Body muscular pain also reduced particularly at cervical and fingers palm^-1. Output in terms of kg was also high in T₃ (extra 90.5 kg hr^-1). Even it removes the body etching and burning problem faced by the farm women which was the extreme problem quoted by the farm women.