Old age is already showing on Hu Yuezhen's face. Now in her early 40s, she has more silver than black in her hair.

Also living under her roof in Ziyun County, in Southwest China's Guizhou Province, of Southwest China are two sons, one in primary school and the other in junior middle school; her parents-in-law, who are in their 70s; and Hu's husband, Wu, who is rarely home.

"My husband works for the county construction team, and the team is always on the move to wherever work is offered," Hu said.

At home there is always plenty of work to do. The land has to be tilled, the sons and the parents-in-law need to be taken care of, but with her husband's absence, the entire burden at home falls on Hu's shoulders.

Although she sometimes wishes her husband were home, spending more time with the family and lending her a hand in the field and with household chores, there is an upside. More time on the road means more money brought back. Their son's tuition has to be paid on time.

With China's reform and opening-up, rural workers migrate more to urban areas for better-paid jobs, which has created a new group of left-behind women.

"When the husbands are away from home for work and the absence period is longer than half a year, their wives left at home are called 'left-behind' rural women," said Zhu Yongming, sociology professor at the East China University of Science and Technology in Shanghai.

Besides the constant lure of the city, the shrinking amount of arable land forces surplus rural labourers to leave their hometowns.

Mostly, the male members of the family are sent to the city. They bring home the bacon and provide the muscle for the rapid urban development in China, and their wives deal with the family responsibilities.

According to research by Bai Nansheng, a professor at the School of Agricultural Economics and Rural Development of the Renmin University of China in Beijing, 130 million rural workers were working in urban cities at the end of 2005, of whom 81.7 per cent were married. The total number of left-behind rural women was 47 million. And little publicity has been given to them.

The burdens

Song Guifeng lives in the countryside of East China's Anhui Province while her husband works in Wuxi, Jiangsu Province.

"When he is away, I have to face all the difficulties myself," Song said. "One time, I was poisoned while spraying pesticide. I did not go to hospital but drank lots of water," she said, tears welling in her eyes.

The lower number of men in rural areas raises public security issues, as well. Without the protection of male family members, homes and women become targets of criminals. But many women, afraid to lose face and be subjected to public scrutiny, refuse to go to the police for help. Xu Linguo, an officer in the public security bureau of Jiangsu, said investigators learnt about 90 recent sexual attacks, but the female victims did not initiate most of the reports.

And that doesn't include property thefts and robberies.

"One night in September, six households were robbed in a village under my supervision," the chief said. "Five of them were families of left-behind women."

Psychological trauma only adds to the physical problems and threats.

Qi Yuling married Cao Wen, a farmer in Jiangsu, 15 years ago. Though not well educated, Cao is a shrewd businessman. With many years of working experience in Shanghai, he finally started a small business. But as their lives began to improve, Cao started to look for other women. "He wants a divorce," Qi said. "He has a girlfriend in Shanghai."

Women have become the backbone of China's rural output, in addition to the role they play as traditional Chinese wives. "From an economic point of view, acres of land go to waste because of a lack of labourers," Yuan Dong, professor at the Central University of Finance and Economics in Beijing, said in a research paper. "That leads to a lack of input for the rural economy, a decrease in rural consumption and a vicious circle for the left-behind women, which leaves them in an even harder environment."

The ramifications

For some women, the burden becomes too great. Many husbands come home after a long period of absence to find their wives gone for good.

Dai Guoxiang, a resident of rural Anhui Province who worked in neighbouring Shandong Province, lost four fingers while operating a machine in August. On September 16, he returned home with compensation money wanting to settle down. But his wife wasn't home and apparently had been missing for months.

"If I had come home earlier or if I had stayed home more often, she might not have deserted me," Dai said.

Xiong Ling, 35, was working in Fuzhou, capital of Fujian Province, for more than four years while his wife, Liu Li, stayed at home in Liupanshui, Guizhou Province. They divorced in May.

"We quarrelled so often on the phone that divorce became an inevitable choice," Xiong said. "She complained of being alone at home, but I was under lots of pressure in Fuzhou, too. The effect was devastating. My mother was very upset about it."

Xiong's mother never thought the marriage of her daughter-in-law and her industrious son would end in divorce. "I don't know who is to blame," she said. "My daughter-in-law is a good person. I know she is lonely and feels insecure, stuck at home with us old people and taking care of their 11-year-old son. Rural women these days lead harder lives. At least, husbands and wives were always together in our time."

Divorces also carry a psychological burden. When the distance between the couple can't be tolerated any longer, they clash, and divorce becomes the final choice, said Zhang Yulin, sociology professor at Nanjing University in Jiangsu Province.

"The continuous rise in the divorce rate has undermined the widely acknowledged phenomenon that marriage in the countryside is more stable," Zhang said. "The divorce rate in the countryside these days is very close to the national average."

The National Juvenile Working Committee announced on June 1, which is International Children's Day, that because of the migration to urban areas, more than 20 million children are left behind in the countryside with one parent or none at all.

According to the Xinhua News Agency, in provinces where a large number of rural workers have migrated to the urban areas of Sichuan, Jiangxi and Anhui, the left-behind children account for 18 to 22 per cent of the total number of children in those provinces.

"With so much work to do, the left-behind women just don't have enough time for their children," said Li Hongliang, Party secretary in Guxian County of Anhui. "Many left-behind children mix with village hooligans and are not good at school."

Ye Jingzhong, a professor at the Humanities and Development School of the China Agricultural University in Beijing, points out that the problem of left-behind women has an adverse impact on rural society's development and needs immediate attention.

"The infrastructure, social and cultural equipment of the community is closely linked with the left-behind population," Ye said. "The community system has to take into account the lives and production of the left-behind population."

Helping where possible

Many local governments have started various programmes at the grassroots level to help left-behind women. Bishan County, Chongqing Municipality, has roughly 100,000 of them. The local Women's Organization and the Association for Science and Technology have co-operated to set up various teaching programmes targeting these women.

Classes teach farming skills and stock-raising. "The county has other programmes as well," said Liu Xianrong, a village head in the county and a beneficiary of the programmes herself. Agricultural experts are sent to the village to conduct one-on-one teaching.

"We encourage each other and help each other so that lives become easier for us as a community," Liu said.

Ye added: "The government and the organizations at all levels shall conduct all kinds of programmes to help those people. On the other hand, corresponding policies should also be stipulated, such as setting up or improving the rural social security system."

Back in Ziyun County in Guizhou, Hu sees respite on the horizon. "When my husband comes back for the New Year, I can breathe more easily."

She looks into the distance, to where the village entrance is. Someday in the near future, her husband will come back from this direction and the family will finally enjoy a rare reunion.