Farmworkers in a Lomellina rice paddy

The mondine worked bent over for 9-10 hours a day with water up to their knees, among leeches and anopheles mosquitoes; many developed chronic rheumatism before the age of thirty.

The weeding season drew labourers from Veneto, Emilia and the Mantua area: in 1930 over 150,000 women migrated every spring to the rice paddies of Pavia, Vercelli and Novara.

The average daily wage of a mondina in 1905 was about 1.80 lire, from which the cost of farmhouse lodging was deducted: less than the wage of a male labourer employed at the same farms.

Standing knee-deep in water, back bent, sun overhead: the rice paddy is the open-air factory of agricultural Italy.