Female Laborers

Definition:

Women who work too long, too hard, and too much, especially in back-breaking manual labour.

Statistics:

- out of the 550 million working poor in the world, an estimated 330 million, or 60%, are women

- the majority of women earn on average about 3/4 the pay of men for the same work

- an African peasant woman typically works 16 hours daily trudging long distances to fetch firewood, animal fodder, and water, growing and harvesting food, tending crops, and cooking and caring for her family. This leaves little time for education and training, the very things that enable women to break the cycle of low status and poverty

- worldwide, over 60% of people working in family enterprises without pay are women

- on a one hectare farm in the Indian Himalayans, a pair of bullocks works 1064 hours, a man works 1212 hours and a woman works 3485 hours in a year

Personal Impact Story

The women of the village would laugh about it, look up from their work as they cooked around the fire, eyes wide, push their tongues through spaces once filled by teeth and smile. They tried to prepare me for the day when the village midwife would put a knife between my legs and cut me.

“You’ll scream until you fade into dark dreams, then wake up groaning in pain. The most pain you will ever know.”
“You’ll pray to God that you could die. It is the one time in your life you’ll wish you were born a man.”
“ But, you won’t have to do any work for a week.”

And then they would all laugh. Around the circle they would go, energized by each other’s playfulness after another tiring day, coaxing smiles, each new comment like another stick thrown on the fire, until they felt warmed and comforted by laughter.

“A week of rest.”
“A week of sleeping.”
“A week of nothing, you’ll feel restless with so little to do.”
“But oh, you’ll remember that week, daughter. When you’re out in the field planting seeds with your own hands, bent over the dry earth.”
“When you’re walking all that way from the river with a jug of water on your head, the sun beating down on you.”
“When you’re fetching firewood, or watering the goats.”
“When your husband chooses to lie with you at night – ”
“Or in the morning, or in the afternoon!”

The circle erupting again in laughter.

“When you bury another baby in the ground, you’ll remember that week of rest.”

The women sitting around the fire would become quite. Some busy again with work. Some would stare into the fire. Their faces betrayed their fatigue. Skin weathered by wind and dryness and sun. Bodies taut, hands strong and muscled. I would help them prepare the meal, but mostly watched them as they spoke, eyes dancing like the fire.

“You’ll wish there was more skin left to cut, daughter. There will be days when you will wish you were thirteen again and that you could feel that cold flint knife against your thigh. You’ll wish you could bite that stick between your teeth and welcome the pain, if only to have a few days of rest.”

*the above story is based on facts but is fictional, for actual statistics order 30 Days of Prayer for the Voiceless today