Women are responsible for cooking, raising children, and taking care of housework. In families relying on agriculture, women are in charge of weeding and help with the harvest, and among poor families women also perform full-time work for the more well-to-do. The man's job is to protect women and children and provide them with material support, and in this role men dominate all aspects of business and public life. At the center of the system are children, who mix freely until puberty and receive a great deal of affection from both sexes. As they enter their teens, children begin to adopt the adult roles that will keep them in separate worlds: girls help with household chores and boys work outside the home. Among the middle- and upper-income groups, however, education of children may last into their early twenties, and women may mix with males or even take on jobs that were in the past reserved for men. There has been a tendency to view the educational qualifications of women as a means for obtaining favorable marriage alliances, and many middle-class women withdraw from the workplace after marriage.

Women - Working Conditions

The Factories Ordinance prohibited work for women between 9:00 P.M. and 6:00 A.M. In the years after independence, a further series of laws restricted the employment of women and children to designated time periods and places. A 1957 law, for example limited working time for women to nine hours. Other laws prohibited women and children from working time underground, in mines, for example.

Women in the Armed Forces

The Sri Lankan Army Women's Corps was formed in 1980 as an unarmed, noncombatant support unit. Set up with the assistance of the British Women's Reserve Army Corps, it was identical in structure to its parent organization, and its first generation of officer cadets was trained in Britain. Candidates were required to be between eighteen and twenty years old and to have passed the lowest level of the General Common Entrance examinations. (Officer candidates must have passed the Advanced Level.) Enlistment entailed a five-year service commitment (the same as for men), and recruits were not allowed to marry during this period. In the sixteen-week training course at the Army Training Centre at Diyatalawa, cadets were put through a program of drill and physical training similar to the men's program, with the exception of weapons and battlecraft training. Women recruits were paid according to the same scale as the men, but were limited to service in nursing, communications, and clerical work. In late 1987, the first class of women graduates from the Viyanini Army Training Center were certified to serve as army instructors.
Women were first admitted into the navy in 1985. New recruits were given six weeks of training with the Sri Lankan Army Women's Corps. Although they were trained in the use of weapons, they were not assigned to combat positions or shipboard duty. Instead, they assisted in nursing, communications, stores, and secretarial work.

	Awareness Programms
1	*Workshop for Introducing new food technolodgy for selected food items	36,474.00	Completed
2	*Awareness Programms for reducing the malnutrition and rovided food hampers for 50 children who asre suffering from malnutrition	20,000.00	Completed
	Programms for Strengthen Women in economically
3	*Home Garden Program at Kirinda Puhulwella	16,250.00	Completed
4	*Starting Home Garden Projects at Karandeniya	14,650.00	Completed
5	* Programm for making home mats at Thihagoda	80,128.84	Completed
6	*Flory Culture Project at Hakmana	47,050.00	Completed
7	*Beet Root Cultivation project at Sooriyawewa	47,856.00	Completed
8	*Sewing Program at Katuwana	34,450.00	Completed
9	*Starting Home Garden Projects at Ambalantota	60,520.00	Completed
10	Awareness Program at Kamburupitiya for reducing the unsafetiness of the children whos mothers are in abroad	7,500.00	Completed

MINISTRY OF SPORTS, YOUTH AFFIRS, RURAL DEVELOPMENT, RURAL INDUSTRIES, WOMEN AFFAIRS, FISHERIES, HOUSING & CONSTRUCTION, PUBLIC AFFAIRS OF SOUTHERN PROVINCE