37-year-old Victoria Torop struggles to start an old Belarus tractor. At first, she has trouble shifting into first gear. She yanks the gear lever back and forth until finally it fits. The ancient 130-horsepower engine roars into action as she takes off for a spin through the tomato fields on a farm in southern Ukraine.

Torop, who lives in Snihurivka in the Mykolaiv region, which had 12,000 inhabitants before the invasion, is just one of eight women on this farm who are enrolled in an educational program to learn how to drive a farm tractor. The United Nations Development Fund is financing the program, and local companies eager to find new employees are anxiously watching the results. The Ukrainian army needs more men to hold off Russian advances in eastern Donbas, and most local communities are having trouble handling the region’s normal workload as more men are sent to the front line.

“I need to support my country, but I also don’t see why women can’t drive tractors,” says Torop.

“One farmer was surprised when he saw me driving sometime back,” she adds. “He said I was driving better than most men. It is a myth that only men can do this. Women can do more than just give birth to children.”

Agriculture is not the only sector that’s experiencing change. A Ukrainian company, DTEK, currently hires women to work underground in its coal mines. In Kyiv, women are learning how to drive the capital’s underground metro subway line. Before the war, only men were trusted to do that. Women are even being hired as security guards in supermarkets.

“Not every woman can do this job, or even wants to do it,” says Torop. “But plenty of women can handle it, and some are even better than men. Others will stay at home and cook, which is also fine.”