The International Labour Organisation reported in 1993 that the most plausible explanation for the decline in agricultural employment is under-enumeration of women engaged in agriculture (ILO/ARTEP 1993). Since the census count enumerated primary occupations, women normally engaged in multiple activities may have been unable to identify any single activity as their primary occupation. Although a significant proportion of women in the atolls work in agriculture, their involvement in a range of economic activities may make it more difficult to identify a main occupation, causing the 'not stated' category to be disproportionately large. In the Maldives, as in other countries within the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation, women's economic work is often considered as unpaid family labour.
In order to recognize gender differences within households in the context of agricultural and rural production, policy-makers and planners need to:
Ö incorporate and differentiate between women's and men's activities in national statistics produced for the manufacturing and agricultural sectors;
Ö identify and highlight gender roles in natural resource use and management; and
Ö identify strategies to expand women's participation in economic activities.
