Izvorni znanstveni članak
The Woman in the Village — — a Farm Worker or/and a Housewife?
Anđelka Milić
Sažetak
The participation of the woman
in agricultural production carried
out on the family farm, and
changes that accompany her
participation in the Yugoslav
society, have not been adequately
and precisely comprehended. This
is partly due to the unsuitable and
incomplete statistical evidence
offered by official statistics.
The family farm can be defined
as an undifferentiated set of
activities carried out by its
members to create the means for
their reproduction. Among them
production activities are closely
intertwined with and permeate
other household activities, and
also activities outside the farm.
Modern agricultural techniques and
technology, and agricultural
market production, lead to a
greater differentiation among
those activities on the family farm.
Men and women, young
and old, participate in
agricultural activities, with the
division of labour carried out
according to the heaviness of work
and specific technical skills that
some jobs demand. The woman is
always a participant in agricultural
work on the farm. She is
additionally burdened by
housework and child care. As for
the division of labour in agriculture
itself, it is usual for the woman not
to do the most ardourous farming
and other work (ploughing,
mowing), but this is not the rule,
because what she does depend on
the size of the farm and the size
of the working force available in
the household. Vegetable growing
and gardening, livestock and
poultry care and
processing dairy products are
considered typically female jobs. If statistics bear in mind past
conditions, and those dominant
on most modern family farms, its
efforts to carry out a strict division
of participation in agricultural
work between female and male
members cannot be successful. We
can ask whether statistics are right
from aspect of the future. The
manner in which they treat the
activities of the agricultural
population and the inhabitants of
farms, shows statistics to
underestimate the true participation
of women in agricultural
production.
However, this relationship between
statistics and the activities of
rural women is not only a
technical question, but can be
explained from the aspect of a
more general manner of approach
to the role of the woman in society.
If information about the
production activities of the rural
woman and the woman in general
are compared with what statistics
have to offer, in the case of the
woman's behaviour in the sphere of
reproduction, then there is no
doubt that this second activity has
precedance.
One of the fields in which statistics
offer information about women in
general, and especially about farm
women, is marital behaviour. This
field is important both for the
study of changes in the position
and opinions of the farm woman,
and also from the wider social
aspect of studying demographic
changes in the village, for which
marital behaviour has a very great
significance. Marital migrations,
which are a characteristic form of
migration among the female rural
population, have a lasting influence
on demographic structures in the village and disturb the natural
balance in those structures, which
has important economic and social
consequences. Unfortunately,
because of the way in which census
data are processed, statistics do not
enable us to enter a more complex
process of explanation and
interpretation of present events in
the village and the mobility of its
population.
Only one conclusion can be drawn
from this whole discussion. The
social evidence about a both
socially and numerously important
part of the Yugoslav population is
sparse and unreliable. This makes
it impossible to gain a more
complete and general insight into
that part of the population, and
also into changes that take place
in the rural society. We can only
hope that in its future actions the
statistical service will try to
decrease or overcome some of the
existing shortages in its
evidence.
Ključne riječi
Hrčak ID:
119332
URI
Datum izdavanja:
4.6.1979.
Posjeta: 1.083 *