For the Pacific Islander women who harvest the fruit and vegetables that stock Australia’s supermarket shelves, motherhood here can mean injury, debt, secrecy and fear.
Sure, Priscilla could hide her growing belly from her supervisors on the grape farm. But there was no disguising the way exhaustion crept through her limbs as she stripped leaves off vine after vine in the heat. She’d rest often. But her rate of work declined, and, as a result, so did her income.
Priscilla’s employers clocked her pregnancy soon enough. The two men employed…
