Occupational Health Hazards of Women in Agriculture - A Study on Bargarh District of Odisha

Abstract

The woman is the backbone of the agricultural workforce but worldwide, her hard work has mostly been unpaid. The objective of the study was to find the common occupational health hazards in women agricultural workers and their effects and to find out the protective measures used by agricultural workers for the prevention of occupational health hazards. The present study was based on 110 samples of three villages of Bhatli Block in Bargarh District in the period of 2018-2019. The results revealed that physical hazards such as body pain (86.36%) and fatigues (83.63%) were most common in all agricultural activities. The majority of respondents (77.24%) had mechanical hazards, i.e. injury occur due to farm tools and machinery. Chemical hazards like skin problems affected 39.09% of workers, and environmental hazards such as air-borne allergies (32.72%), poisonous organism bites (21.81%) were found common among the respondents, and no association was found between their socio-economic levels in the relevance of occupational health hazard. The agricultural workers were usually careless towards the prevention of occupational hazards.