Farming
Unearthing the Past: Women and Land Ownership in Ireland
Women in Ireland today are farming – but most are not farming land they own. A look back at historical practices helps to explain why.
Conferences
Stolen Moments from the Ernst Farm: Letters to a Texan in the CCC
The 406-acre Ernst Farm on the outskirts of San Antonio, was almost completely operated by strong-willed rural women, as a mother, three sisters and a granddaughter make a productive farm through the Depression and World War II.
New Books
Poor Farms and the Mythmaking of the Multitasking Woman
We talk about the strains of rural women’s lives in past tense: being isolated during a long winter on a farm, kneading bread while nursing a baby, or darning socks while rocking a cradle with a spare foot, but recently women have experienced social isolation of their own, staying home to avoid the transmission of COVID while being separated from the support of family and friends, baking bread to both pass the time and to cope with interrupted supply lines, trying to write late at night while the children sleep.
history
Diaries of August 1920: “More to life than the daily grind”
[D]espite the pressures of harvest, August allowed the Sweetser family time for their favorite summer activities: Chautauqua, picnics, and lake excursions.
Uncategorized
Gramie Sweetser Drove a REO: diaries of an Aroostook County, Maine, farm wife, 1920-1956
I physically experience farm life in the context of the research I conduct, and I often reflect on the lives of women in this same place when it was in its ascendancy.
research
Family farming from a rural women’s perspective
University of Lethbridge graduate student Diane McKenzie is combining her rural roots and her research interests with the intention to make an important contribution to the future of agriculture.
Economics
The Invisible Farmers
The Chief Justice of India’s recent remarks suggesting women have no place in the ongoing farmers’ protests may have gone unnoticed in the 1960s. Today they appear astonishing in their lack of awareness about what the face of the Indian farmer looks like.
New Books
Agrarian Women and the Welfare State
Agrarian Women and the Welfare State Sommestad, Lena, translator Grey Osterud. Agrarian Women, the Gender of Dairy Work, and the Two-Breadwinner Model in the Swedish Welfare State. New York and London: Routledge, 2019. Review by Sally McMurry, Professor Emerita of History, Penn State University The point of this book is Read more
Economics
Women’s Cooperative Farming in India
Can farming in all-women’s groups help women outperform individual male-managed farms in productivity and profits, and empower women socially and politically?