Women in Ukraine have increasingly stepped into roles men used to perform before Russia’s full-scale invasion. Now they are in demand in steel plants as male workers are sent to the battlefield.
At ArcelorMittal’s plant in Kryvih Rih, a city in southern Ukraine and President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s home town, managers say hiring more female workers is a matter of survival for the business. Of its 18,000-strong workforce at the start of the war, some 3,500 men have been mobilised and more are likely to follow this year.
“If they continue to mobilise, we will not have enough [staff] to operate,” Mauro Longobardo, the plant’s chief executive, told the Financial Times. “We are talking here about existence of the company.”