Rice-weeders at work in the Lomellina

The Lomellina and the Vercelli area drew tens of thousands of mondine every year for the 40-day weeding season between May and June, lodged in collective farmsteads.

In 1906, in Vercelli, the mondine won for the first time the recognition of the effective eight-hour day in the paddy field, after strikes led by Modesta Cravero and Argentina Altobelli.

If eight hours seem few to you / try working yourselves / and you will find the difference / between working and commanding.

Malaria was endemic in the Po Valley rice paddies until after the Second World War: mondine received state-distributed quinine rations from the 1902 law onwards.

Giuseppe De Santis's film Riso amaro (Bitter Rice, 1949) brought the condition of the Lomellina mondine to the screen, fixing the image of their exploitation and female solidarity in the Italian imagination.