In a country where women are encouraged to stand behind men, it is incredible to read that groups of them are risking their lives for their countrymen.
Nearly 40 years after the Americans dropped the last bomb on Laos, two all-female unexploded ordnance teams are in the field clearing up. The bombing campaigns of 1964-1973 were designed to cut off supply routes for North Vietnamese forces.
About 30 per cent of bombs did not explode and so it is left to the 24 women with their shovels and metal detectors to remove the bombs that are proving deadly to the farmers who have unwittingly stumbled upon one. 50,000 have been maimed or killed.
The Mines Advisory Group actually choose women where possible to mine the fields as the community upside is that the workers are trained as technicians or medics and this increases their status.