Agriculture is an important unorganised sector where majority of the women labour force is engaged either in their own field or others field, and most of the activities women do in agriculture sector are tedious, time consuming, and drudgery prone and back-breaking. Out of various activities, threshing is one of the important post harvest operation of grains where women ’s involvement found mostly among small and marginal farming community. Present study on physiological stress of farm women was taken up to assess effectiveness of hold on paddle operated paddy thresher in terms of productivity and as drudgery reduction tools in comparison with manual threshing done by foot. Average working heart rate and energy expenditure of women in using hold on paddle operated paddy thresher is 131.1beats/min and 12.12 kj/min respectively which is observed 8.84 & 15.26 per cent less than manual threshing by using foot. Physiological cost of work reduced by 27.27 per cent with use of hold on paddle operated paddy thresher. Mean value of overall discomfort in response to musculo-skeletal problem and posture with hold on paddle operated paddy thresher found 7.6 in comparison to 14.1 in traditional method.

Keyword: Farm women; Drudgery; Threshing; Energy expenditure; Physiological cost of work;