Key Aspects of Employment and Unemployment of Rural Women in Poland

A. Wrzochalska

Abstract: The main kinds of vocational activity of rural women in Poland are their work on farms, housework and the increasingly important non-agricultural economics activities. The study attempts both to define the role of rural women in agriculture and in the nonagricultural spheres of life and the factors which have the influence on their employment and to explore the reasons (social criterions) behind the change in rural women’s social status. The study presents changes in employment of rural women, their chances on the labour market as well as the incidence of unemployment among the rural women in Poland in the 1990 s and the years 2000, 2002 and 2011. To be able to explore the issues connected with the rural women’s employment and unemployment both static and dynamic analyses, being complementary to one another, were made. The results were presented using the tabular method and the descriptive one. The factors determining the rural women’s employment rate are: their level of education, their age, the economic category of the family (for non-rural families), the economic size of the farm (for rural families). According to the researches carried out labor is the fundamental social quality and provides a criterion on witch an opinion about a particular person is formed. As a result of the reforms experienced by the society as a whole, both urban and rural, unemployment poses one of the most important, still unsolved problems in Poland and other countries. The agriculture as a sector of the national economy is exposed to international competition and at the same time has to suffer hidden unemployment and the immobile labour market. An effort should also be made to ensure jobs for rural people at working age (including women) and to keep the agricultural employment at the hither to existing new jobs outside agriculture. Problems of rural women on the labour market are connected with the general state of unemployment in the country, the socio-economics situation of rural residents, the development of rural enterprise, the creation of new workplaces and additional sources of paid employment both in a village and on one’s own farm. They have many common features. However, the female inhabitants of rural areas should be particularly supported by the separate social policy. The fact that social benefits are more and more important reflects the lack of such a policy and the practice of taking only occasional actions in this respect. The measures for dealing with unemployment which were implemented by the Western European countries should be therefore adopted and the alternative solutions should also be looked for.

Keywords: employment; Poland; rural regions; unemployment; women

Date published: 2018-02-21