RURAL WOMEN AND LABOUR FORCE PARTICIPATION 37 "breadwinner ethic". Moreover, the decline in household income has led to an increase in women's search for employment outside the home. In the few adjusting countries where women's employment in the formal sector has increased during the 1980s, this has by no means been commensurate with the need for more jobs. The result of these changes in employment and in the labour force has been to throw many more women into insecure jobs in the informal sector. In that sector, however, there has been a drastic decline in earnings (often much greater than the fall in other sectors), even for longer hours of work. Yet despite the meagre returns, women's informal sector earnings have been crucial to the survival of poor families during the crisis of the 1980s . . . (Engendering Adjustment for the 1990s—Report of a Commonwealth Expert Group on Women and Structural Adjustment, 1990, p. 6). Case studies from Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean countries show that structural adjustment policies adversely affect women's employment, incomes and conditions of work. Reduction of government expenditure on education, health, welfare and other infrastructural activities along with increased privatisation and higher skill intensity of jobs creates unemployment in general and for women in particular. At the same time, declining standard of living and general welfare makes it imperative for women to enter the job market for subsistence. A detailed analysis of the status of women in view of the present development policies in India is beyond the scope of this paper. The objective of the present paper is limited to analysing the evidence from the 1991 Census and the quinquennial surveys of the NSSO regarding the nature and extent of female labour force participation. Limitations of an aggregate analysis based on secondary sources allows us only to make broad generalisations about various characteristics of the female workforce in India. At the outset it is necessary to point out that estimates of worker participation rates of women based on the Census and the NSSO data are subject to the changing concepts and definitions regarding 'work'. The concept of work used by the Census does not include domestic work and considers only productive activity outside the home as 'economic participation' in the labour force. This creates the problem of measurement of work performed by women because of blurred lines between categories like market and non-market production, farm and non-farm activities in subsistence agriculture. The Census and the NSS surveys do not take into account people engaged in the processing of primary commodities for home consumption (Jacob, 1986). Similarly those engaged in the production of fixed assets for self consumption are excluded from the labour force (Jose 1989). A woman is categorised as a worker only if the end-product of her labour enters the market network.