Sejal Vaghela
Department of English
Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar
University.
Abstract:
Child Labour
is generally speaking, works for children, that harm them or exploits them in
some way (Physically, Mentally, Morally or by blocking access to Education). It is the work that exceeds a minimum number
of hours depending on the age of a child and on the type of work. While some
people mistakenly think it is better when all members of a family work, child
Labour actually makes poverty worse. The more children are forced to work, the
fewer opportunities there are for adults to earn a living. By driving down
adult wages and depriving children of education, child Labour ensures that
poverty will be passed down from generation to generation. Children or child Labourers
are a heterogeneous social group. Therefore, a girl child Labourer in rural
Andhra Pradesh, Southern India, who is working in the household, cannot be
compared with a Peruvian or Ethiopian Child Labourer, May it be female or male.
Although they all face the daily fight against their exploitative situation,
one should make a differentiation rather than defining them as a homogenous
social group. Different cultures, different sexes, different living conditions
and standards and different daily working lives separate them. It is a
dialectical relationship between unity and diversity, between what is
connecting and what is separating. Child Labour is a worst part of our society.
Child
Labour is the practice of having children engage in economic activity, on part
or full time basis. The Practice deprives children of their childhood and is
harmful to their physical and mental development. Poverty, lack of good schools
and growth of informal economy are considered as the important causes of child
labour in india. Some child rights activist argues that child labour must
include every child who is not in school because he or she is a hidden child
worker. (htt)
In
Child Labour we can see some gender descrimination. These reviews are the
available evidence on developing effective policies against child labour. It
requires attention to gender differences among working children. This is so
because standard definitions of child labour tend to underestimate girl’s work
because economic activities of boys and girls differ by country and industry. Determinants
of child labour may differ by gender. A number of policy implications stem from
evidence preseted in this note, i.e, that including time use modules in
household surveys would capture unpaid household chores performed by children.
Thereby providing more accurate estimates of total work time; interventions to
reduce child labour should address its specific cause and should recognize that
these causes may differ by gender. The determinants of child labour should be
examined by running separate regressions for boys and girls or by interacting
the gender dummy with the main explanatory variables. Furthermore,
investigation in water infrasturucture, providing low cost child care and
increasing access to health care facilities can significantly reduce the time
that girls spend on household chores. Thereby inceasing their school
attendance. Finally, interventions aimed directly at increasing children’s
schooling such as providing subsidies for school fees, reducing distance to
schools and improving school quality are also likely to reduce the prevalence
of child labour. (htt1)
In
Child Labour and Gender bias we can see the Gender roles and birth order often
dictate occupations and tasks undertaken by boys and girls, the conditions and
hours of work and educational opportunities. Agriculture is still a significant
form of child labour for both boys and girls. While boys are more likely to undertake
activities in agriculture and industry Girls outnumber boys in services.
Between 2004 and 2008 the number and incidence of boys in hazardous work has
decreased slightly, while for girls it has decreased more significantly by 24%.
However, hazardous work is increasing for children between 15-17 years by 20%,
10 million between 2004 and 2008. Boys performing hazardous work outnumber
girls two to one in this age group both boys and girls work in fields and often
isolated for long hours, facing the risk of violence and abuse. Many girls face
the double burden of performing household within their own households (for
example, cleaning, cooking, childcare, collecting water and firewood), combined
with agricultural activities, such as sowig, harvesting and livestock holdings.
Taking into account both the work involved in household chores as well as
agricultural tasks, there is country specific evidence showing that frequently
girls work more hours than boys. Additionally a higher percentage or girl child
labourers are unpaid and in the situation that child labourers are paid, girls
are often paid less than boys for doing the same job. In addition, community
attitudes such as not valuing girl’s education (partially due to different
returns to education for boys and girls) and not considering household chores
as work, pose additional challenges to improving the situation of girls in
rural areas. Because of the prevailing division of labour boys and girls are
exposed to different risks and hazards.
In
the farming we can see the biases between girls and boys. In farming boys’ are
often responsible for operating machinery, using sharp tools, spraying
chemicals and they are more often exposed to amputations, cuts and burns,
pesticide poisonings and other adverse health impacts. Girls are often
responsible for carrying water, collecting and carrying wood, risking musculoskeletal
injuries, fatigue and sexual abuse.
In
Indian industries we can see that there are more requirements for boys more
than girls, because they think that boys can do that entire tough work on the
company as their worker. In Pastoral communities, livestock herding requires
boys to spend extended periods of time in remote, isolated areas where they
risk hypothermia, animal attacks, biological hazards, bacterial infections and
sexual abuse. Girls are more often in charge of poultry and smaller animals and
they can be affected by transmission of biological hazards such as salmonella
and avian flu.
In
fisheries, boys are often involved with capture fishing and thus are at risk of
drowning, hypothermia, entanglement in nets and crushing injuries. Girls are
often responsible for selling and processing fish, experiencing respiratory
problems from smoke inhalation and cuts and burns. Studies show that
transactional sex is common in some fish landing areas, thus exposing girls to commercial
sexual exploitation, sexually transmitted diseases and potentially sexual
abuse. (htt2)
Gender refers to constructed social differences
and relations between men and women. Socialization of girls and boys is often not
gender neutral but is influenced and shaped by the different roles and
responsibilities boys and girls are assigned because of their sex. For example,
Girl child is engaged in work related to care giving and caretaking involving,
baby sitting, house cleaning, cooking, washing dishes and mending clothes.
Other hand Boy engaged with running errands, gardening with higher paying
domestic work.
In Child labour and gender bias we can see social
biases. How they ignores them and reality of their lives. Gender analysis is
powerful tool to unmask the causes of child domestic labour and why the girl
child is disproportionately represented in child, are more often than men the
victims of poverty and malnutrition. Moreover, women and the girl child face
discrimination on a daily basis in every country. This includes discrimination
in the enforcement of laws, denial of equal opportunity in education and
employment, cultural and social norms that reinforce female stereotypes and
developmental policies that have led to the feminization of poverty and
subordination of women. In many countries in the world, the right to equality
before the law has been rendered useless by customary laws that subjugate the
woman and the girl child.
Here in these two images we can see that, that
boy work in some construction site and girl works on some household. We can
reduce this with the help of education. Education is a luxury good which can be
purchased more easily by the non – poor. If women is educated than she can
handle the situation of her house. Literacy and language skills acquired in
school impact the health of women and their children. For example, girls in
school are likely to acquire the skills to be able to read health education
materials that discuss such options as child spacing that can have an influence
on their health of their children. Behaviour role modeling and exposure to
positive health messages increase the changes a girl will adopt and adhere to
positive health behaviours.
Girls who are in school longer are also more
likely to delay marriage and their first pregnancy, thus reducing their total
number of children.
“Equal pay
for women is a matter of simple justice”
-
Mary Anderson.
Equal access to education is a basic right and there is growing
concern that all children specifically girls, minorities and children from low
income families are not afforded equal educational opportunities. The provision
of education is critical and it may require overall improvement of public
health resources to assure that children are able to avail themselves of
educational opportunities.
Children who lives in homes where the parents, particularly the
mothers are better educated are more likely to go to school and stay in school
longer. Children who live in homes with parents who received little or no
education are more likely to have shorter tenures in school and begin working
at an early age. This is especially the case if they do not show academic
promise. An underlying factor in this problem is the level of expendable family
resources. Children are often required to participate in accumulating resources
for the family at an early age if the family is living in poverty. The more
time they have to spend contributing to the family’s resource pool, the less
time they have for school.
The amount of time spent in school is directly related to the
earning potential of the individual. The longer children are in school, the
more likely it is that they will be employable and have greater bargaining
power. This is more of an apparent benefit for females than males in that, the
greater their earning potential, the more leverage they have in the household
to determine the use of that income be it for school expenses for the children,
food allocation or health expenditures. (htt3)
“Factories and shacks were cramped, filthy,
Unbearably hot and humid, imperiled with stray
electrical wires and rusty nails, filled with stagnant and dust filled air, and
Contaminated with grime and mold. Some sites were so filthy, pungent and
dangerous that the researchers were afraid to enter due to the risk to their
safety. Physical and verbal violence against the workers was all too common.”
So, this is the reality
of now a day of Child Labour and Gender bias. Child labour has been a problem
for years in a lot of countries around the world. The causes are quite similar
to any other country, through with many Indian singularities. Everyone agrees
that child labour is a plague but most families know they don’t have much
choice, not putting a child to work means there won’t be enough food on the
table for everyone. School also tend to teach things that aren’t always very
useful to kids once they get back home, let alone to find a low skilled job. In
that sense they don’t provide much justification for parents to give their kids
an education if they don’t see immediate benefits. But thimgs are slowly
changing as the government is trying to improve the quality of schools as well
as making their program more practical and relevant to children’s lives.
Another problem remains parents aren’t making enough of a living to sustain
their family. That’s plain and simple poverty causing and fueling child labor
in india. Be it in manufacturing or in agriculture, people are systematically
under – paid. (htt4)
Works Cited
<http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_labour_in_india>.
<https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/11210>.
<http://www.ilo.org/ipec/areas/Agriculture/WCMS_172261/lang--en/index.htm>.
<http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1497786/>.
<http://www.poverties.org/child-labor-in-india.html>.
.
