REFORM in the post-Mao era has resulted in significant changes to the type of agricultural work undertaken by rural people, the organisation of that work, gender divisions of labour in agricultural work and between agriculture and other work, and the way in which agriculture is perceived and valued in comparison to other activities.

This chapter is not a detailed empirical study of the work of women and men in agriculture. Instead it seeks to outline gender divisions of labour within agriculture, and then to discuss two key trends relating to divisions of labour between agriculture and other forms of remunerated work that have emerged in the 1980s and 1990s. The first of these is a withdrawal of women from agriculture in areas where there is a surplus of agricultural labour, but a lack of alternative employment. The second is a contrasting trend in which responsibility for agriculture has been taken over by women, whilst larger numbers of men have been absorbed into non-agricultural employment.

GENDER DIVISIONS OF LABOUR IN AGRICULTURE

On the eve of reforms in the late 1970s the majority of both men and women in rural areas worked in some form of agricultural labour. There were, however, significant differences in their patterns of employment.