Exploring gender engagement among estate sector field workers in Nuwara Eliya district, Sri Lanka through a GEDSI approach.

Abstract

Gender assessment is crucial, especially among ground-level workers to ensure their welfare, living status and wellbeing. Thus, this research aims to find out gender roles and levels of participation among field workers in Nuwara Eliya tea estates. Three tea estates, namely Gorakaoya, Katabola and Somerset were selected as these exhibits accessibility to a significant resident labour population, particularly in terms of male labour force. A questionnaire survey (n=48) was adopted to glean quantitative data with equal representation of both men and women. The Moser framework was adopted to draw meaningful inferences. Results revealed that 87.5% of women perform all productive, reproductive and community roles while 68.75% of male labourers perform only the productive role. An equal percentage of male workers play both productive and community roles together with productive and community roles (6.25%). A significant level of decision-making power has been acquired by women workers (63%) due to their earning capacities, whereas the figures reported was 43% for men (p = 0.006). A significant level of gender disparity was observed with respect to resource accessibility which was analysed using the Wilcoxon sign rank test (p< 0.025) for all concerned types of resources. Female labour accessibility for career advancement was also low (p=0.00). Moreover, it is evident that the existing reward system lacks in recognizing and compensating female labour contributions (p = 0.02 for savings; p = 0.005 for bank loan accessibility). In conclusion the study showed the connections between gender dynamics and disability inclusion and the persistent disparities in resource accessibility, and job empowerment. Introducing a loan system for entrepreneurial skill development and capacity-building programs can economically and socially empower individuals in the estate sector. Promoting equal male and female participation in estate-level societies will address social and labour productivity issues in the sector.