Attitude towards Domestic Chores: A Locale Based Comparison of Female Students

Household chores are the integral part of women's lives. These are the activities required for the smooth running of houses and living comfortable life. The purpose of the study is to highlight the female's role in housekeeping as well as to determine the female students' attitude towards domestic chores. In the present study an effort has been made to compare the rural and urban female students' attitude about domestic chores during their academic c areer. Conveniently selected sample comprised of post graduate (master class) students from a public sector multi campus university. Analysis of data concluded that most of the female students take care of their houses as well as their families during studies. Moreover, significant difference was observed among the attitudes of rural and urban female students and the students of different disciplines towards chores. th century labour saving household devices which owed a huge debt to electrification and brought light and power into home{23}. These labor saving gadgets are, e.g., small and efficient electric stoves and irons, vacuum cleaners, washers, dryers, and dishwashers. In the second half of the century advances in electronics yielded appliances that could be set on timers and even programmed, further reduc ing the domestic workload by allowing washing and cooking to go on even in the absence of human launderer or cook{6}. Keeping in hand the present situation of domestic chores, the researchers tried to explore the attitude of female students towards household activities. The household activities which were the focus of the present study were cooking, cleaning and dusting, household purchasing, washing, stitching and ironing {29}. The women in rural areas have to hunt many livelihood plans, e.g. to produce agriculture crops, nurturing animals, preparing food, work on wages for crops, to collect fuel and water, feeding and maintaining the whole family {10}. The female domestic chores include cooking, washing dishes, laundry, cleaning pots and houses, nurturing the young kids, taking care of old ones, purchasing the audible and maintaining the homes while the male domestic chores include feeding the animals, shoveling the snow, house maintenance and taking out trash {11,2}. The rural women have different roles, responsibilities and knowledge as compared to men. The men have to plant, weed, and harvest and take care of livestock, whereas women have to prepare meal, manage the homes and take care of children and relatives. Additionally, poor families' women have to work as wage labourers to earn additional income, and even work on small scale trading and enterprises. Along with all these additional activities, the rural women have also to collect firewood and to fetch water covering miles of distance. It is empirically revealed that women have to work twelve more hours per week than men in Asia and other part of the world. Over the years, women have entered various male-dominated occupations. However, they are still rarely employed in jobs with status, power and authority or in traditionally male blue -collar occupations. Relative to their overall share of total employment, women are significantly underrepresented among legislators, senior officials and managers, craft and related trade workers, and plant and machine operators and assemblers; they are heavily overrepresented among clerks, professionals, and service and sales workers. The detail description of domestic chores is as under: Cooking is the process of preparing food for the family members. Cooking is laborious task but it cannot be escaped. Women all over the globe are not only responsible to do cooking but naturally they take interest in it {8}. Cleaning is another important household activity. As hygienic atmosphere brings up the healthy personalities and