Aspirations of women agricultural labourers 

Abstract

An aspiration usually refers to a person or a group of person's orientation towards goal. Labourers also have a goals like to get more income per year, to save and invest more money to raise standard of living, to educate their children, to settle their children in better occupation, to construct pucca type of house & purchase any type of furniture in house, etc. A higher level of aspirations among the women agricultural labourers would certainly lead to a greater level of development among them and gives an impression of their living standard, their level of adoption and ways and means to be adopted by the government and other agencies to bring about an all-round development in this underprivileged but indispensable group of the Indian population. In order to know the aspirations of women agricultural labourers and the association between the characteristics of women agricultural labourers and their aspirations, the study was conducted in three districts viz., Banaskantha, Mehsana and Sabarkantha under jurisdiction of Sardar Krushinagar Dantiwada Agricultural University, Sardar Krushinagar (North Gujarat). All the 15 research stations were selected as the study area, a total of 65 women agricultural labourers were selected proportionatly but 60 respondents were available at the time of data collection. Using simple interview schedule with personal contact method, the data were collected. In order to determine the extent of aspirations a teacher made structure schedule was worked out by the conference method of the teachers. It was found that majority of the (80%) women agricultural labourers had medium to high level aspirations owing to young age group. The independent variables viz., age and marital status were negatively and significantly associated with aspiration at 0.01 level of significance. While education and mass media exposure were found positively and significantly associated with aspirations at 0.05 level of significance. Remaining variables were failed to establish any significant associationship with the aspirations of the women agricultural labourers.