WOMEN AND RURAL REVOLT IN INDIA 17 extent are they in actuality wage workers, something like a genuine proletariate rather than disguised sharecroppers or semi-serfs? What role do they play in total peasant movements and how is this role changing? To put the issue in another way, women are important to agricultural labourers, but just how important are agricultural labourers? This issue requires going beyond the static categories of work participation and dealing with the changing nature of work itself, or rather, production relations, over time. More specifically it is a question of the mode of production in Indian agriculture which will be the starting-point of the second part of this article, in the next issue of the Social Scientist, (To he continued) 1 Esther Boserup, Women's Role in Economic Development, St Marlines Press, New York 1970. 2 The 1973 pilot study was financed by an academic senate faculty grant from the University of California, San Diego. The 1975-76 study was financed by a partial sabbatical leave and by a grant from the American Association of University Women. 3 Mao Tse-tung, "Report on an Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan", Selected Works, vol I, Peking 1967, pp 44-46. 4 Gail Omvedt, "Class, Caste and Women's Liberation", Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars, January-March 1975. 6 Committee on the Status of Women, Towards Equality, Government of India, Department of Social Welfare, New Delhi 1974, p 153. 6 Ibid., pi 58. 7 Bhabani Sen Gupta, "Indian Communism and the Peasantry", Problems of Communism, January-February 1972, p 196. 8 Committee on the Status of Women, op.cit., p 158; Census of India, 1974. 9 Kamla Nath, "Women in the Working Force in India'5, Economic and Political Weekly, 3 August 1968; "Female Work Participation and Economic Development: A Regional Analysis", Economic and Political Weekly, 23 May 1970* 10 Judith Van Alien, "African Women, ^Modernization' and National Liberation", in Lynne Iglitzen and Ruth Ross (eds.). Women in the World, Clio Books, Santa Barbara 1976. 11 Leela Gu!ati, "Female Participation : A Study of Interstate Differences", Economic and Political Weekly, 11 January 1975; "Occupational Distribution of Working Women: An Interstate Comparison", Economic and Political Weekly, 25 October 1975, and "Female Work Participation: A Reply", Economic and Political Weekly, 9 August 1975; J N Sinha, 'Temale Work Participation: A Comment", Economic and Political Weekly, 19 April 1975; D Narasimha Reddy, "Female Work Participation: A Study of Interstate Differences5', Economic and Political Weekly, 7 June 1975; Kamla Nath, "Female Work Participation and Economic Development", Economic and Political Weekly, 23 May 1970. 12 Boserup, op.cit. 13 Reddy, op.cit. 14 Census of India, 1901-1931. 10 Census of India, 1974. 16 See S K Rao, "Measurement of Unemployment in Rural India", Economic and Political Weekly, Review of Agriculture, September 1973; Gulati, "Unemployment among Female Agricultural Labourers", Economic and Political Weekly, Review of Agriculture, March 1976.