“The men weren’t used to women working next to them. That’s changed.”

Even under optimal conditions, vineyard work is much more taxing than Bucio’s previous jobs. “The first day I went, it was 90 degrees,” Bucio says. “I was sweating, sweating. I thought, I can’t do this, not in this heat.” But she noticed how easily her more experienced colleagues moved among the vines. “If they can, why can’t I?” she asked herself.

Defeat, discouragement, then determination to persevere: It’s all intertwined in Maria Bucio’s complicated relationship to her work. Indeed, despite its often grueling nature, Bucio even characterizes her job as a liberation of sorts. “Here in nature, I feel less stressed,” she says. “I’m freer. My compañeras and I — we laugh, we sing, we dance while we work.” “Well, we’ve cried too,” she adds. After a long day of harvesting, at a cafe near her home in Fairfield, Bucio’s face shows weariness. The rapidfire pace of her speech and movements has slowed. Under angular penciled eyebrows, her eyes wander, distracted, sadder. No longer obscured by bandanna, Bucio looks younger than her 35 years.

As proud as she is of her work, she can’t seem to reconcile the cruel paradox of her situation: To support her family, she had to leave her family.

“I get sad sometimes,” she says, staring at the table in the Fairfield cafe. “But I know I have to endure this.” Soon, she reminds herself, she’ll be reunited with her children.

Renteria’s director of vineyard operations, Ciriaco Hernandez, admits he was resistant to the idea of hiring large numbers of women. “You never know what’s going to happen,” he says. “I feared it would be a negative environment.”

Hernandez’s boss shared that fear. “Machismo, unfortunately, is a part of our culture,” says Oscar Renteria, a first-generation Mexican American who grew up in Napa Valley. “It was always common in Mexican culture for men to discipline women.” Growing up, his mother would be spanked for misbehaving not only by her father but by her brothers, too — even younger brothers. As a child, Renteria saw some of his father’s friends in Napa get in legal trouble for spousal abuse, which, he says, “wouldn’t have been as big of a deal in Mexico.”

Three years ago, Oscar Renteria implemented a mandatory training program for male employees in supervisor positions, with the explicit goal of preventing sexual harassment and changing attitudes toward female workers. He has little tolerance for machismo among his crews — especially