Women face social and economic discrimination
which is further compounded by new hazards in rural areas as pesticide use
increases. About 25% of farms now use pesticides in the country, and while women
bear a major responsibility for farm work and using pesticides, their
contribution to the agricultural economy is not recognised. Any short stay in a
rural area is sufficient to observe women active in many jobs in the fields. At
a meeting of 20 women in Liaqatpur, they listed at least 25 agriculture-related
activities in which they are actively involved with their men. One woman said,
"I get up early in the morning and run either to the fields or to the animal
shed. Who has the time to wash one's face? We do not even have the time to say
our prayers, the workload is so much."
The National Agriculture Policy makes no mention of women in
the statement of its objectives, and only four minor references to women in the
overall document. It provides no clear policy for the development of rural
women, who form the backbone of the rural economy. This discrimination is
reflected in the official documents and reports and as a consequence encourage
officials to overlook and marginalise women's work.
The Census of Agriculture does acknowledge the work of women
in agriculture, but indicated a drop in their contribution from 42.6% of all
family workers in agricultural households in 1980 to 36.2% in 1990. In 1980,
women constituted about 25% of all full time and 75% of part time workers. In
1990, the Census registered 25.87% and 61.25% respectively. However these
figures do not correspond to the reality because the smaller the size of the
landholding, the more intense, active and efficient the role of the women
becomes. It is not cost effective for smallholders to hire paid labour.
The decade from 1980 to 1990 has seen a further fragmentation
of land-holdings. Fragmentation means that women's work has to be even more
intensive in order to make agriculture economically affordable. Women have to
work more, longer and harder. They are economically active and substantially
contribute to many activities, including:
crop farming and livestock keeping
post harvest activities
household management
off-farm and non-farm economic activities
bearing and rearing children and looking after the sick
While some of these activities are recognised
as important, the visibility of women is selective and their invisibility is
rooted both in economic and social factors. Rural women of Pakistan are
economically active but are also economically dependent. Women have neither
ownership nor control over resources and they are expected to surrender their
rights in favour of brothers or husbands.
Women work and produce on land they do not own. With the
introduction of market economics the situation of has further deteriorated. The
harvest is sold by and through men, and men control income. Land is owned by men
and the fruits of the land are enjoyed by men. Thus men automatically become
visible and women become invisible. Who actually worked in what way to produce
the crops is not taken into account.
Other factors like lack of access to credit facilities,
gender bias in transfer of new technologies and required training, education and
extension further compound the matter and force women to remain behind the
scenes.
The pervasive patriarchal ideology reinforces the economic
subordination further. Gender discrimination starts from the early days of a
female child. She is taught not to value herself when it comes to equality with
males in the family. This applies even to small matters such as eating food of
the same quality. The systematic unjust socialisation takes root in the
conscious and unconscious minds of women. They have no power to make decisions
on how to behave or dress, whether or not to get an education, whom to marry,
whether to have children and how many, whether to plan a family, whether to
maintain ties with her parents' family, marriage or divorce, contact with the
outside world, her health and so forth. All powers are vested with the males of
the family.
Such circumstances make her unaware of the complexities of
the outside world and fosters an ignorance of the laws of the country that
govern her life. She does not know how she is made a featherless bird. But she
knows full well that individually it is not easy to fight for her rights, even
if she wishes to. She is caught in a complex web and thus succumbs to male
authority and dominion.
Women's encounter with pesticides
Women have always played a key role in disease and
pest management which took shape in various activities of soil improvement and
fertility management as well as direct measures to eradicate the diseases in
crops and animals. But with the advent of new pest management techniques and
technologies women have been by-passed. Recognising only men as farmers, they
have become the focus of extension. In order to fully comprehend women's
encounters with pesticides, and the impact of these chemicals, it is necessary
to look at their total farming workload.
In the area studied, over 60 activities of women to the whole
system of farm work have been identified. In the course of these they
frequently encounter toxic chemicals. The survey conducted for this study notes
that generally, women are not directly involved in spraying pesticides, but are
involved in the following activities which expose them to pesticides:
helping mix pesticides
washing tanks
disposal of empty containers
washing pesticide-soaked clothes
storage of pesticides
weeding and thinning
picking cotton
storing the harvested cotton
collecting sticks and using them for fuel
taking food to men in the fields
Generally, women wash clothes in water
courses which are near or run through the fields. In most cases, houses are
surrounded by the fields that are sprayed, exposing all the inhabitants to
deadly poisons. When weeding-a task which falls to women five to six times a
season-pesticides are inhaled and absorbed. Cotton crops are sprayed at least
six or seven times in a season, and in sugar cane fields their exposure is even
more prolonged.
Taking food to men in the fields brings women to freshly
sprayed fields, and can prove extremely dangerous. Jobs like taking animals to
the fields, cutting fodder for animals, taking care of vegetable plots,
collecting material for fuel, bathing animals in the water courses, are all
activities where women could be affected by the poisons in addition to direct
involvement in agriculture or related activities that expose them to the hazards
of pesticides.
Major hazards arise from cotton production
Cotton picking is one of the main areas of women's
exposure to pesticides. Exposure begins when women treat the seeds with
sulphuric acid and carries on through to storage of the picked cotton. Seed
treating is carried out using a large vessel, where acid is mixed thoroughly
with the seeds in a ratio of 2 grams of acid to 1kg of cotton seeds. After a few
minutes, the seeds are washed off with water and dried. Then the seeds are ready
to be sown. The same vessel is used for other purposes in the house such as
washing clothes.
Women are engaged in cotton picking for a period of two and a
half to three months. This constant and prolonged exposure to toxic chemicals in
many ways poses greater health problems than spraying itself. While picking,
they are vulnerable to cuts and skin rashes that further expose them to the
hazards of pesticides. Studies quoted in the report of this survey have shown
that "out of a total of 88 female cotton pickers only 1% could be termed out
of danger. 74% had blood acetylcholine esterase (AChE) inhibition between
12.5-50%. 25% were in dangerous conditions where blood AChE inhibition was
between 50-87.5%." After picking, women are not in the habit of changing
clothes which may have had contact with pesticides.
All the respondents pick cotton during pregnancy which poses
additional problems: "I go for picking even to the last day during
pregnancy", said one woman. Women feed children in the fields, without first
washing, posing serious health hazards for the mother and child. During the
survey, it was noted that some of the women carry their small children while
picking cotton. Many children were found in the fields, either helping their
mothers or just following them. All the young pickers were girls.
During cotton picking, pesticide poisoning has increased and
symptoms reported by include: sneezing, muscular pain, dizziness, nausea,
burning skin, itching, cough, headache, blisters on body and suffocation.
Vulnerability and health care
The women interviewed found it ridiculous to ask how
they treat poisoning symptoms and laughed at the researcher for suggesting they
consult a doctor. It is not possible to go for medicine for small ailments. One
of them remarked "Unless we are unable to move, we do not think of going to a
doctor or of taking medicine." Some local remedies are used, for example in
case of skin burning, they apply mustard oil or butter oil. "Where can we get
that much money to spend on burnings treatment?" remarked a woman. This is a
reflection of the low status assigned to women and how they have internalised
it. They cannot "afford the luxury of medicines" when there are so many
other needs to be attended to in the family. The needs, problems and interests
of women come last.
One woman who did spray pesticides, Perveen, has been
adversely affected. Her most painful complaint is that she cannot hold food in
her stomach and vomits food as soon as she consumes some. Other symptoms include
sneezing, vomiting, watery discharge from her nose, and pain in the ribs. She
has taken medicines but to no avail. She feels better for three or four days and
then the complaints recur.
Generally speaking, the farmers feel that there are many new
diseases unheard of in the past. Although there is no laboratory tested
evidence, they tend to attribute the introduction of diseases like frequent
fever, blurred eye sight, diabetes, blood pressure and cancer to the use of
chemical pesticides and chemical fertilisers.
The examples reveal rural women's vulnerability to chemical
pesticides. Unfortunately, in the absence of proper diagnostic apparatus, it is
difficult to pinpoint the cause of any illness as arising from exposure to
pesticides. An exception is the case of acute poisonings. However this makes
life even more difficult. As a doctor from Liaqatur commented, "doctors are
not trained to find the cause of a particular ailment where farmers' are
exposed to pesticides. Thus they are unable to diagnose the illnesses properly.
Generally, pain killers are given in such cases".
As women's access to health care, even during times of
visible discomfort, is minimal there is no monitoring of the absorption of
pesticides, of the impact on blood, reproductive organs, size of infants, and so
on.
While the pesticides law has been amended several times, the
amendments are focused on the issue of quality of the chemicals and no mention
has been made of the threat facing human health.
Towards a just and equitable society
A number of reforms are essential to ensure better
visibility for women's work and to recognise their role in the mainstream of
agriculture. It is of paramount importance that land reforms be initiated that
guarantee joint ownership of agricultural land by both men and women. Technology
packages which are oriented towards women must be urgently introduced,
especially where women are already key actors. Effective measures are needed
which encourage participation of women in the market processes.
A rapid policy shift would be helped by studies which
highlight women's roles in various areas, including:
socio-cultural life of rural Pakistan with a focus on the gender relationships;
women's role in securing food and fibre;
the relationship between economic dependence and access to nutritious food;
the qualitative and quantitative contribution to agriculture of women all ecological zones;
the role of women in natural resource management;
documenting women's knowledge on agriculture;
agricultural technologies traditionally
used by women, their displacement by the advent of modern technology;
women's exposure to chemical pesticides in cotton and in other cash crops: particularly in vegetable cultivation a traditional area of women's labour with a growing concentration of chemical pesticide use;
pesticide residue levels in blood and the
impact on women's reproductive system.
Almost no programmes address the problems of
rural women. A few donor-driven, men-led women's groups exist, but the token
presence of women in these groups without a real voice or decision-making powers
is not encouraging. Initiatives which are women-led and which understand the
mechanisms of gender relationships can form a sound basis for future action that
strives for a society free of discrimination and injustice.
| Use of pesticides in Pakistan In the 1950s chemical pesticides were used for the first time to combat locust attacks. In 1954, formulated pesticides amounting to 254 tonnes were imported. That was the beginning of the pesticide business in the country. Until 1980, the government controlled the import, and subsidised the distribution of pesticides. The sale of pesticides in 1995 was worth 9 billion rupees (US$222 million). This does not include the relatively large quantities of pesticides smuggled from across the border. About 145 pesticide formulations have been registered. The pyrethroids have the greatest share, with 45% of the market by value, followed by organophosphates with 39%, chlorinated hydrocarbons 9% and carbamates 4%. According to the Agriculture Census, in 1980 4% of total farms used chemical plant protection measures, but this rose to around 25% in the 1990s, that is 1.28 million farms or up to 16% of total cropped area. Free aerial spraying was previously provided to control pest attacks on major crops. The Plant Protection Department now has a fleet of 22 aircraft which sprayed about 351,000 hectares of crop area in the year 1995-96. According to the Prime Minister's Task Force on agriculture, approximately 90% of the insecticides are used on cotton crop. That means most of the 6.62 million acres under cotton crop are the target of pesticide use. Influenced by international campaigns 21 pesticides have been de-registered and the import of either technical grade material or formulations is banned in the country: including four of the Dirty Dozen pesticides. However, the overall situation regarding over-use, and strict enforcement of regulations, seems bleak. Policy concerns focus on 'quality standards' rather than pesticide use. Recent legislation reflects a concern with adulterated pesticides, rather than with the quantities of pesticides used. |
Nasira Habib works for the KHOJ Research and Publication Centre, Lahore, Pakistan. This article is based on her book, 'Invisible Farmers: a study on the role of women in agriculture and the impact of pesticides on them', Pesticides Action Network Asia and the Pacific and Khoj Research, 1996. Available from PANAP (see details on p. 2).
[This
article first appeared in Pesticides News No. 37,
September 1997, pages 4-5]