The female cotton pickers behind your clothes – and the climate change threat they face in Azerbaijan

BAKU, Azerbaijan: On the dusty outskirts of the city of Imishli in central Azerbaijan, a large statue looms over an anonymous T-junction. 

A female figure, adorned with fading white paint, grips a broad bundle of cotton. Behind it is an expansive frieze, depicting dozens of figures, mostly women, in valiant poses. 

They are the «white gold» heroes. 

Cotton workers, long-standing cogs behind a powerhouse regional industry, hold an esteemed place in local lore.

But the realities of life these days in the fields that stretch out throughout this rural district, and the wider central region of Azerbaijan, are not so resplendent. 

In some of them, progress appears to have stalled long ago, back in Soviet Union times. Women in their 50s and 60s, their faces hidden by colourful shawls, swing heavy hoes into parched soil. 

Their spines are curved from years of squatting on haunches to pluck weeds from struggling rows of cotton bushes, a high sun inflicting temperatures in the mid-30s degrees Celsius. 

Unstable economics and the grip of poverty in rural areas have kept these women in hard manual labour. And turbulence driven by climate change has made their jobs more difficult than ever.

“God help those who plant the cotton,” said Ms Mehpara Asadova, a 58-year-old veteran of the cotton fields. 

“We come and earn 15 manats (US$9) from here and in this way we pay for electricity and gas. But with that, we cannot afford to buy meat to eat. We barely manage to make ends meet. That is how it is,” she said.

Research in 2019 by the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) found that Azerbaijan's «agricultural labourers are mostly from landless, rural households and predominantly women». In a survey, it found that the share