Hundreds of woman in one cane producing district were agreeing to the surgery, say activists, in order to keep working long, physically punishing hour.
Women working in sugar cane fields are still being “pushed” to undergo surgery to remove their womb and enable them to work longer hours without period pain, activists in India’s state of Maharashtra have said.
Large numbers of women undertake long hours of manual work harvesting, gathering, lifting and loading large stacks of cane to trucks and tractors. A combination of poverty, low pay of less than £4 a day, and the threat of fines for missing or incomplete work days, was putting pressure on women to agree to hysterectomies, despite promises of reform, said labour rights’ campaigners.
They say women have been told that surgery would “release them from the monthly problem” of period pains and allow them to work longer hours.
“Period pain or pregnancy means more missed days and more lost wages. While [sugar cane] contractors may not physically force them to undergo hysterectomies, they create conditions that push women into it. For many who have already had children, it feels like the only way to keep working,” said Manisha Vaijnath Tokle.
According to surveys conducted by local NGOs in 2019, the rate of hysterectomies among women from one of Maharashtra’s main hubs for sugar cane workers, Beed district, was 36% compared with a national average of 3%.
Under pressure from activists, the local authorities agreed to investigate the issue and found more than 13,000 sugar cane workers in the district, including some under the age of 25, had had their wombs removed over the previous decade.
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