Women play a major role in agricultural activities in Saptari district. Most of the labour involved in producing the district’s main crops, including paddy, wheat, pulses and vegetables, is carried out by women. However, despite doing most of the farm work, women labourers say they still receive lower wages than men.
According to Nabita Mandal of Rajgadh Rural Municipality-6, male workers are paid between Rs. 800 and Rs. 1,000 a day, while women receive only Rs. 500 to Rs. 700 for similar work.
She said that men are paid Rs. 200 to Rs. 300 more because they are needed for tasks such as ploughing fields with tractors and levelling field bunds with spades. Women, however, have to accept lower wages despite working long hours in the crop fields.
Another worker, Rashmi Yadav, said women are expected to transplant at least one kattha of paddy in a day but earn only Rs. 500 to Rs. 700. She said they have no choice but to work for low wages because they depend on daily earnings to feed their families. She added that the authorities have not paid enough attention to the issue.
Once fields are prepared for paddy plantation, women carry out most of the remaining agricultural work. They plant paddy, remove weeds, manage irrigation, thresh crops, tie and carry harvested paddy, sow wheat, and grow pulses, oilseeds and vegetables.
Om Prakash Sah of Rajbiraj Municipality-7 said men are paid more because they perform physically demanding jobs such as ploughing and digging with spades, which women generally do not undertake. As a result, farmers hire both men and women but pay men higher wages.
Women’s rights activist Sunita Pariyar said women are the backbone of agriculture in Saptari. She said many men from the district are working abroad, leaving women to manage both household responsibilities and farming.
According to labour rights advocate Kedar Dev, around 65.5 per cent of the district’s population depends on agriculture, while women perform about 80 per cent of the agricultural work.
He said women carry out between 70 and 80 per cent of farming activities across the district. Although women receive equal pay in some places, wage discrimination remains common in most agricultural work, and labour rights groups have repeatedly raised the issue.
