In Tunisia, despite a law to regulate the transport of agricultural women since 2019, fatal accidents continue. The majority of these women, who represent nearly 80% of the sector’s workforce, go to their workplace and pack 20 to 30 into pickup trucks. A very dangerous means of transport: between 2015 and 2023, 55 of these women died and 796 were injured in these accidents. Figures which demonstrate the failure to protect them, according to the Forum for Economic and Social Rights, author of a study on the issue, presented in Tunis last October.
At the Cité de la Culture in Tunis, the smiling faces of around ten rural women are plastered on the walls. But looking at their biography, the stories repeat themselves: very harsh working conditions and suffering from the lack of change.
“When I leave my house, I don’t know if I will return alive in the evening”
Naziha Kamel, 45, is a worker at Souk Jedid in Sidi Bouzid in central Tunisia. She says: “It’s really hard, whether it’s in terms of work, the salary which is miserable or the transport. Frankly, we’re fed up. From the moment I leave the house until I return, I only encounter difficulties in this work and even more with transportation. I leave my house, I don’t know if I will return alive in the evening. »
In 2019, in Sidi Bouzid, a dozen women farmers died after their pick-up overturned following a collision. “I don’t see any change since this accident,” laments Naziha Kamel. In Sidi Bouzid, in just one week in October this year, we had two accidents. The causes are numerous: the roads are in poor condition, the pickups are overloaded and when they see the police from afar, they change their route. So you can’t enforce the law.”
Fatiha Chouihi, originally from Médenine in southern Tunisia, also talks about precarious working conditions. “Look at my hands how damaged they are,” she says. I work without gloves. When we pick olives all day, whether we fill one or four crates, we get paid the same price, per day, and it’s not much.”
They are paid between 6 and 9 euros per day, depending on the region. Less than the men who, for the most part, refuse to do this work anyway. And 92% of them are without social security coverage.
“We call for a review of the entire work system for agricultural workers”
Despite the formation of unions for women agricultural workers, the writing of numerous studies on their working conditions, and the support of several NGOs, things are indeed struggling to change. Hayet Attar, responsible for women agricultural workers at the Forum for Economic and Social Rights in Kairouan, central Tunisia, and author of the study, gives recommendations after interviewing 500 agricultural women in 12 governorates for her report.
“Women who work in the agricultural sector are increasingly aware of their rights, this is something that has been achieved in recent years,” she explains. They refuse this violence and this injustice that they suffer on a daily basis and they cannot fight alone. Civil society and the State must support them through the revision of the legislative system that manages agricultural workers. “Implementing a transport law is not enough.”
Hayet Attar concludes: “We, as the Forum for Economic and Social Rights, are calling for a review of the entire work system for female agricultural workers and we are calling for a radical solution to be found for the issue of transport for these women. We have repeatedly called for a ministerial council on the subject because all ministries must cooperate so that we can have a profound change on this problem, which is only getting worse.”
