WOMEN IN THE FIELDS.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19011, 6 November 1923, Page 11

WOMEN IN THE FIELDS.

LAND WORK IN FRANCE. Everyone was struck during fne war by the way in which Frenchwomen kept the fields and farms going single handed. In point of fact, as many Frenchwomen are probably working to-day on the land, but thev arc less conspicuous since they are working together with the men. All along the war front it is a striking spectacle to see the women helping to cut the corn, removing stones, hoeing, digging potatoes even, or, in the more devastated parts, clearing the ground and restoring it to its normal condition. On the small farms whole families are working together, and there are quite as many women as men. In Champagne the vineyards are worked to a very great extent by the women of the family, and those women who have no lies of their own hire themselves out tp do agricultural work just as. a man would. At present, in view of the shortage of labour in Prance and the abundant harvest, families are being invited from the towns to help on the land. The invitation has not met with any very great response, and conditions of work for the peasant women arc, for the moment, inhumanely hard Besides cooking and keeping the house going—without. be it understood, any of the modern conveniences to help them—thev, work in tho fields and gardens and vineyards all the rest of their time. They get up before it is light and they work until it is too dark to see, so that for two or three months their amount of sloop is reduced to a minimum. Agricultural work is, for the most part, particularly hard in France, since so much of it is done upon old-fashioned lines. Side by side with modern machinery imported from America, there is corn being cut and bound by hand, and while the men for the most part do the actual cutting, it is not necessarily confined to them. Sundays do not count either during tho busy season. This year a good deal of the corn, even while it is etf exceedingly good quality, has been beaten down by the weather and this again necessitates a greater amount of labour. Both men and women—to say nothing of the children—are pressed into the service, and while the French peasant woman is amazingly strong, the hard work ages her. until, at 40, she often looks like an old woman.