TERHATHUM: Women in many villages in the district plough the fields these days as majority of male youths have left the country in pursuit of foreign employment. The women have started tilling lands for the men have left the land for greener pasture.

Anu Aangkhewa, 16, said that she has to plough the field as her brothers left the country. Anu said, “My father is very old, he cannot plough the field. So I have to do it."

Her father, 55-year-old Purna Bahadur, said that Anu had taken the responsibility of men. "My elder son Prem is in Malaysia and younger Chakra Bahadur is in India. So, Anu has assumed son's responsibility", added Purna Bahadur. A sixth grader at Janakalyan Lower Secondary School at Jorsalla, Anu expressed confidently that women could do all the works that male counterparts have been doing.

Tara Dhakal, deputy-chairwoman, District Women Rights Forum, said that other women too in the district had also started to plough fields. Meanwhile, Sudap VDC secretary Hari Prasad Koirala said that over four hundred youths had gone abroad from the VDC alone. Nearly 22,000 youths have gone abroad from the district, the District Administration Office said.