Plan India's Samanta aims to bring gender parity to rural workplaces

Plan India's Samanta is ensuring that women farm labourers not only earn as much as their male counterparts but are also treated with dignity and respect

It has been a long journey for Sakshi Devi of Ambedkar Nagar, Uttar Pradesh. When she started working as a daily-wage agricultural labourer soon after she got married, she would quietly do what was asked of her and accept whatever was offered as wages — mostly five kilograms of poor quality food grain for a day’s work. All this changed in September 2015 when her employer delayed the payment for 10 days of work. “I hadn’t said anything when he said he’d pay me Rs 85 a day, when men were being paid twice that for the same work,” she