‘Women, men working in sync to strengthen fight against agri laws’

New Delhi, Jul 26 (PTI):
Gender lines blurred and traditional roles reversed ever so often as men and women joined hands to share responsibilities in the farm, at home and at protest sites to keep up the prolonged fight against three agri laws, women farmers said here on Monday.
Gathered for an all-woman Kisan Sansad (farmers’ parliament), they demanded the repeal of the Essential Services Commodities Amendment Act, and stressed the seven-month agitation at multiple sites on Delhi’s borders could be sustained because men and women — whether husbands and wives or fathers and daughters — were completely in sync.
Whether it was cooking at home to feed the children, ploughing the fields in the sun or relentlessly protesting for months, both men and women farmers, since November last year, have defied conventional gender roles to do it all, the women farmers, who travelled to Delhi from different states, said.
Farmers, mainly from Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pardesh, are demanding that the legislations be repealed and have been protesting against the laws at Delhi border points of Ghazipur, Singhu and Tikri.
“Women are doing men’s work and men are doing what women used to do. So what?” Kulwinder Kaur from Punjab’s Tarn Taran district said at the Kisan Sansad, which is being held at Jantar Mantar near Parliament where the Monsoon Session is underway
“Women are no longer the same. Kalpana Chawla went to space, we have only come to Delhi. If women can become prime ministers, why can’t we fight our own battle,” said Kaur, who was among the 200 women who participated in the farmers’ parliament, which began on July 22.