Tucked away in the hilly terrains of the Sahyadris, a clutch of villages have been quietly leading the way in the emancipation of women. Turning the traditional pattern on its head, here the women make a march towards the cities for work, while the men stay behind to look after the fields, run the households and bring up the children.

About 55 km from Pune is Aadgaon village, which wears a strangely deserted and drab look. Here, about 75 per cent of houses have sent their women to Mumbai, where they work as maids in and around Lokhandwala.

As 46-year-old Yashwant Gopale of Aadgaon spreads groundnuts to be dried in the sun, his son pitches in. “My wife works as a domestic servant in four to five houses and earns about Rs 3,000 a month. She sends us most of that money and it takes care of my son’s college education,” said the farmer who owns about two acres of paddy fields.

In neighbouring Vandre village, Tukaram Jadhav says his wife Shakuntala, who left for Mumbai three years ago, now works as a domestic maid. She earns Rs 3,500 a month, a large part of which goes towards paying off loans incurred by the family. Their 17-year-old son Sanjay stays with the father while the younger one is with the mother in Mumbai.

“This trend of women going to Mumbai to work as maids began some 10 years ago but picked pace only in the last five years. In some villages like Gadat, 90 per cent of the women have moved to Mumbai for work. Almost everyone here is a farmer but the returns are just about enough to feed the family. Men cannot go because they need to tend to the fields,” explained Ramdas Shinde, gram panchayat member of Amboli, whose wife works in Mumbai.

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