JINHA

NEWS CENTER - According to a report by a platform focused on working women in Turkey, women migrant agricultural workers face the widespread problem of low pay and their wages being seized by men.

Earlier this month, 15 agricultural laborers (almost all of them women) died in a car crash caused by unsafe transportation for migrant workers in Turkey. Around one million people in Turkey work as seasonal agricultural laborers.

According to a new report by the platform Women's Labor and Employment Initiative, 80% of female migrant agricultural workers in Turkey are housed in tents near worksites. The average population of each tent is 7; more than half of agricultural workers do not have access to electricity. Clean toilets are also rare.

In the province of Manisa, where the 15 agricultural workers died in the crash, the average woman agricultural worker officially earns 41 lira ($15.50) per day. Because male supervisors take a cut of the women's wages, the take-home wage falls to 35 lira ($13.20) per day for women.

Women earn 321 lira ($87) less than men every month in the agricultural sector, despite the fact that they often work longer hours. Some women work up to 18 hours a day. Workers reported that while men are more likely to operate machinery, women are more likely to be assigned difficult tasks like planting, weeding, sorting weeds from plants and harvesting. In addition, women work after hours at tasks like making food, carrying water, gathering wood, starting fires and cleaning tents.

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