ROLE OF WOMEN IN RURAL DEVELOPMENT 53 dairy, poultry and artisan work are considered to be engaged in gainful economic activities. Thus economic activities in this study include crop husbandry, dairy, poultry, artisan work and hired-out labour. Results and Discussion Table I indicates that, taking economic and domestic activities together, women work fora larger number of days and for longer hours in a day. The average standardised work days for men and women are 210.8 and 417.8 respectively. The average working hours per un-standardised day for men and women arc 4.6 and 9.1 respectively. Thus women's work hours per day are almost double that of men. The work days in economic activities (total work days minus work days for domestic purposes) for men and women are 203.5 and 212.7 respectively. It clearly shows that the participation rate measured in the number of work days is slightly higher among women as compared to men.This is a clear indication that women who are basically housewives are also engaged in economically productive work in addition to their domestic work. All the men in the sample agreed that their wives were working for longer hours and also that their wives' work was more arduous. However, some variations exist in the case of total work days of men and women in the three categories of households. The total work days of men in agricultural, artisan and agricultural labour families are 177.1, 315.7 and 139.8 respectively. The corresponding work days for women are 456.9, 428.5 and 368.4 respectively. Men in the second category (artisans) are working for more days, followed by agricultural and agricultural labour families. The smaller number of work days of men in the first and third categories can be attributed to some extent to the partial drought during the year under reference. Among agricultural families, small farmers work for a larger number of days as compared to large farmers. Among women, the first category had the highest number of work days followed by artisan and agricultural labour families. As far as the economic activities are concerned, women in the first category had the highest number of work days in economic activities, followed by those in the agricultural labour category and then those in the artisan category. It can be observed from the table that the agricultural labourers, both men and women, are getting work for fewer number of days as compared to the other two categories, and this clearly shows the extent of under-utilisation of labour among agricultural labourers. If we express the labour contiibution in terms of money rates obtained at the prevailing wage rates the contribution of men is Rs. 1015.50 per year and that of women is only Rs. 425.40. This low level of contribution of women in terms of money can be explained by the difference in wage rates—Rs. 5.00 per day for men and Rs. 2.00 for women.