BOOK REVIEW 115 in interaction with patriarchy as well as, in the Indian context, by caste factors. It is emphasised in the study that participation of women in labour process does not respond to a marked mechanism. The constraints of women's involvement in work are clear from the fact that an overall increase in agricultural productivity does not lead to an increase in women's employment although it seems to be so in case of men (p. 96). Changes in prices or output cannot explain variations in labour force statistics for women; and self-employed women do not show a positive relationship with crops like paddy and cotton cultivation but agricultural women labourers do. It needs to be yioted that these two crops employ female wage labour in large quantities for strenuous and underpaid operations like paddy transplantation and cotton picking. There is evidence of increasing casualisation and marginalisation of women workers over the past few decades. Structural changes in the economy due to globalisation and Structural Adjustment Programme have relegated women to the unskilled low-wage sectors of the economy. These workers are the most vulnerable sections with uncertain employment status and subsistence wages. 'Variations in total agricultural, output and consumer prices have an immediate effect on the standard of living of this section of the population who are on the threshold of poverty' (p. 48). Women's employment and the non-agricultural wages of other members of the household keep these sections of society from starvation during the years of adverse agricultural production. Women's employment or even choice of employment is restricted by the lack of mobility across regions and even within the same region. Restrictions on mobility are as much due to the patriarchal norms of social beahviour as due to other extra economic factors particularly so in the Indian context. The role played by caste in creating segmented labour market can not be underestimated as the caste configurations keep women out of certain work categories. The upper caste poor peasant households may not allow their women to work on the field or tend the cattle; while amongst the low caste middle peasants, women work on their farms and as exchange labour. The prevalence of piece work and home based activities involve women in surplus generation within the limits set by caste and gender. Women also are treated as the labour reserve in the process with increasing casualisation and open unemployment. At times, women are preferred for jobs in the unorganised sector due to their docile nature. Women from landless families and those from poor peasant household enter the labour market during adverse agricultural years. This happens particularly when the men from such household migrate in search of jobs and women take up as sole earners with all other responsibilities of taking care of the children and the aged in the family. A direct relationship between agricultural prosperity and