South Asian farmworker women face exploitation

May 12, 2026

farm workers — South Asian farmworkers face exploitive agricultural labour practices.

Media interviews include: Vancouver Sun, CBC As It Happens (interview starts at 28 min mark) and a published op-ed by Dr. Anelyse Weiler and co-author, UVic sociology PhD student, Jasmine Padam.

"For decades, South Asian immigrant farmworker women have faced exploitative practices like wage theft, lack of access to clean washrooms and excessive and unpredictable hours," says Anelyse Weiler, UVic associate sociology professor and co-author of a new report.

Growing Injustice: Health, safety and dignity for South Asian farmworker women in British Columbia, seeks to address these injustices through policy reform.

“Since the late 2010s, the BC ministries of agriculture and labour have acknowledged the vulnerabilities facing agricultural workers, but it is unclear whether commensurate improvements have been made in recent years to support their workplace rights,” says Weiler.

“South Asian farmworker women who are new immigrants face additional vulnerabilities like language barriers and lack of formal job training. Previous research and advocacy have shown that the people who harvest the province’s vegetables, grow ornamental flowers and pack berries face low wages, high risks of injury and weak workplace protections.”

The report shows that health and safety risks are pervasive, including a lack of potable water, chronic and acute physical injuries, unsafe machinery and retaliation for voicing safety concerns. These issues are intensified by weak enforcement and deceptive employer practices such as temporarily installing handwashing stations during WorkSafeBC inspections only to remove them once inspectors leave.

Specifically for women, these health risks are compounded during menstruation when inadequate sanitation contributes to discomfort and potential infection risks during long shifts. Long, unpredictable or inadequate hours are made more challenging by the fact that many women are engaged in a heavy “double shift” of paid labour combined with housework and childcare.

The report, co-authored by SFU historian Anushay Malik, David Fairey, labour economist and co-chair of the BC Employment Standards Coalition and University of Victoria PhD student Jasmine Padam, is based on interviews and a focus group with 20 farmworker women in BC’s Fraser Valley. All the women had immigrated to Canada from India and interviews were mainly conducted in Punjabi. Most of the women earned less than $25,000 annually.