In the booklet published by the Italian protestant women, Fdei, for the 16 Days of Activism, the focus was laid on the abuse due to working conditions.
We are posting the page for December 7, dealing with the abuse of female farm workers.
Silence on Workers
There is an investigative book on the condition of women who work in the fields every day, for a few euros an hour, forced to work exhausting shifts, for a starvation wage. Female laborers earn much less than men. The survey was carried out in Italy, Spain and Morocco. The author deals not only with women but also with trade unions and associations. Romanian, Bulgarian, Polish, Moroccan, Spanish and Italian women laborers are blackmailed, suffer verbal and physical violence, and are sexually harassed, as evidenced by the high number of abortions in the Vittoria area (Ragusa) during the harvest months. Violence that is too often silenced; few are able to denounce and many go unpunished, including their employers.
Regarding sexual violence in exchange for work, Stefania Prandi states that “it is an unwritten, underlying rule, a taboo, a reiterated and silenced reality, before everyone’s eyes, passed off as normal”. They are single mothers or with distant husbands, sons and daughters who stay at home with their grandmothers or aunts. The institutions, the politicians, thecommunity are aware of what is happening but no one is doing anything simply so as not to put the agri-food industry and the commercial chain of our and other European countries in difficulty. Tomatoes, strawberries, blueberries and raspberries are grown in greenhouses, harvested by these women and packaged to arrive on our tables.
BIBLE VERSE
But if out in the country a man happens to meet a young woman pledged to be married and rapes her, only the man who has done this shall die. Do nothing to the woman; (…) for the man found the young woman out in the country, and though the betrothed woman screamed, there was no one to rescue her. (Deuteronomy 22, 23-27)
COMMENTARY
There is no mention of male workers, and especially of female workers.. But the text tells of violence. Violence in an open, public, but also isolated space. Place where cries for help reverberate in the void of indifference. Such as tomato plantations or grape sheds. Places of passage along our highways, ignored in the content. Violence gives rise to more violence, as if it could make reparation for the evil suffered, and men are entrusted with the task of repairing their honor. Women, both free and working, remain isolated, in silent places, full of violence. Open spaces but closed in slavery, where neither human nor divine law can reach.
QUESTION to discuss
How many realities of exploitation and abuse of women are there that we do not see?