Female Farmworkers an Oppressed Class

As reporter Jamoliddin Saifiddinov discovered, women employed on farms are treated poorly and paid little or nothing because they are unaware they have any rights at all, even in cases where they own a share in a joint farm enterprise.



Some women working on cotton plantations get paid in kind in “ghuzapoya”, the dried stalks of cotton plant that serve as a poor kind of firewood.



One woman said she was working for no pay, and had to bring her child along with her since the village had no kindergarten.



“This year they haven’t given us any money yet,” she said. “They say we should be grateful for the ghuzapoya.”