“I dry paddy after threshing it, then parboil it and dry it again. Even when men rest, our work continues,” she said while drying paddy by the roadside.

Nadira Bibi, a 35-year-old farmer who was working nearby, said, “Except for planting and harvesting crops, everything is done by women here -- irrigation, fertiliser application, weeding, threshing, drying, parboiling and storing of grain.”