Impact of Male Migration on Rural Females

Male out-migration from the rural poor over extended periods greatly increases women's work burdens and compounds their difficulties of basic survival. The additional source of income through remittances does not substantially change the economic status of family nor helps it come out of its subsistence level A little more food and a few basic needs to reduce their poverty is all they get in return for prolonged displacement of family life, emotional deprivation and insecure future, except for a possible bridge for their children to go to the big city The women in these de facto female-headed households project themselves as the 'behind-the-scene'decisionmakers, while trying to live according to the expectations of the patriarchal ideology, conferring the role of major decision-maker on the absentee husband. Thus male migration from the poor peasant or landless households by itself neither leads to greater autonomy for women nor pulls the family out of its poverty THE sixtees saw a breakthrough in agriculture in most of south and south-east Asia, thanks to the discovery of high yielding seed varieties and their commercial application. But this technological phenomenon has wider social implications. The disquieting feature of the modernisation process is its role in accentuating inequalities [Tinker, 1976a; Mazumdar, 1979; Boserup, 1970]. Developing societies achieved a fair amount of success in technological advancement, but because of neglect to secure social justice by effectively implementing institutional measures for the equalisation of opportunities to all sections of the society, development with its accompanying rapid social change has in fact been instrumental in widening the gap between the rich and the poor. Furthermore, when development introduces or increases inequality within rural societies, women