The impact of agricultural modernisation on women in traditional agriculture : a case study on the effects of the Green Revolution on Indo-Fijian women in rice farming

From ancient days, women have played a pivotal role in agriculture. They have not only attended to various field operations like transplanting and post-harvest operations like harvesting, threshing and drying but have also provided much of the unpaid family labour in agriculture. The roles of farm women in agriculture can be classified as follows: (i) contributor in agricultural production; (ii) responsible for the management of cattle and other farm animals; (iii) responsible for storage of seeds and food grains and processing; and (iv) decision - maker. The 'green revolution' in rice production has attracted enormous attention. The green revolution is used loosely to cover so much technological, agrarian and social change, in so many countries and zones, with so many ecological and social differences that generalisations are precarious and subject to exceptions [CHAMBERS, 1984:362]. Central to the green revolution has been the dissemination of the ,'new rice t�chnology' - high yielding rice varieties, chemical fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides and also, in same cases, tractors and other forms of mechanization. This new technology has been supported by improvements in irrigation, credit facilities and extension; taken as a whole, the ensemble is the green revolution [BYRES and CROW 1983:6]. The central objective of this study is to assess the gender differentiated impact of the green revolution rice package, using the Rewa Rice Irrigation Project (RRIP) in Fiji as the case study. The fieldwork was undertaken in Buiduna, a small Indo-Fijian rice growing community forming part of the RRIP