JENDOUBA, Tunisia — Hadda is not sure how old she is. Definitely between 40 and 50, but she asks her son for confirmation, and then her husband, who fetches her identity card. She does not know how to read or write. Born in 1967, she has neither left her house in the countryside nor changed her daily schedule. She wakes up at 4 a.m. to cook for her family and to take care of the house and the animals. She is then ready to climb aboard a truck belonging to Nizar, the owner of the land she works on.

Each sunrise Nizar takes 10 women to his fields. They are more or less the same age and are neighbors in the Satfura countryside, close to the city of Jendouba, in northwestern Tunisia. Each year, Hadda has to pay rent of 1,000 dinars (about $600) and financially sustain the household.

Her husband is ill and her children are unemployed, apart from Bassem who occasionally works as a bricklayer. But it is not them who give her the energy to get up every morning and then return from the fields to bake bread. Her daughter Meriem cried for days when she found out she would have to leave school — the fields and the animals were waiting for her as well.

Hadda could not bear her 13-year-old’s tears, and to ensure she is able to continue her studies, Hadda even works in the forest. Hadda is 5 feet 9 inches tall, a stature rare among Tunisian women. But even her tall build seems to be nullified when working the fields. Bent over the weeds, which are uprooted so they do not ruin the potato crop, her body seems to cancel itself out.