Caring the Primary Care-Givers — Determinants of Farmwomen’s Health: A View from Rural Punjab-Pakistan

Abstract

A person’s physical and mental well-being or ill-being is an outcome of multi-level (individual, household, neighborhood, local, national, and global) social, economic, environmental and political milieus under which the person is living. The present study is primarily in search of finding the non-income determinants of farmwomen’s health in rural areas of district Bahawalnagar (Punjab-Pakistan). SRH is used to gauge the state of respondents’ health. The study reveals that farmwomen’s health determinants are particular to them and their families. The study concludes that marriages at early age may result in serious health concerns for a farmwoman. More participation in activities relating to livestock management may increase a rural woman’s work burden that may ultimately result in poor health status. The study also reveals that greater the number of pregnancies, higher the chances to have poor health status of that working woman. Living under joint family system, increases a woman’s likelihood to have good health status. Husband’s higher education status is found to be associating with wife’s good health status. Availability of labor-saving home appliances may save efforts and energies of domestic women and are found to be increasing the likelihood to have good health. The study suggests that at household level, a farmwoman’s health concerns could be minimized by lowering her productive and reproductive work burdens. In reducing her burden relating to productive work, the use of labor or effort saving ways of working through the use of technology is imperative. While a woman’s reproductive work burden could be reduced through discouraging early and excessive child bearing. A woman’s level of education and that of her spouse may positively contribute not only for her own health but for the good health of a farm family.

Keywords: Farmwomen, Self-reported Health, Demographics, Rural Punjab

JEL Classification: I15, J10, Q12, R20, Y10