Azerbaijan is one of the fastest growing economies in the former Soviet Union, and underpinning the country’s current growth is the unpaid and unacknowledged work of women – for many women work that doesn’t stop from dawn to dusk.

Eurasianet highlights the tireless labour of rural women in the village of Celebiler in Azerbaijan, as they perform as much – and often more – work than their husbands.

“First we go to the fields,” says one woman dressed in a colorful housecoat. “Then we come back and get our buckets and walk a long distance from here to get water. Then we come home, and begin washing clothes by hand. It’s torture for us.”

“You can’t think about resting,” says another. “There’s no water, no gas. This is real rural life.”

The resurgence of rigid patriarchal attitudes is typical in many, if not all, of the former Soviet states, often justified on the grounds of religion or cultural tradition. Although life in the former Soviet Union was no walk in the park for women, even the tenuous gender equality achieved under Soviet rule has slipped away in the rush to create successful market economies, often with highly dangerous implications for women, particularly in terms of violence and trafficking.

And the men?

Many men in transition states are forced to seek work in different parts of the country or in different countries altogether, and in Azerbaijan this is all too common, particularly in rural areas where employment is low and poverty is rife. Those men who remain are expected to supervise the women.

“(They) can often be found sitting in groups, placidly drinking tea or playing dominoes,” Eurasianet reports, “All the while, they keep a watchful eye on the women, whose chores even include the backbreaking task of toting water from a distant spring back to their homes.”

When asked if it bothered them to see the women burdened with heavy buckets of water, the men are adamant that tradition dictated it was the women who should perform much of the physical labor. “Carrying water is women’s work,” insists one man. “In our village, if a man carried water, it would be an embarrassment.”

And heaven forbid that.