Farming Women: Gender, Work and Family Enterprise

201 Pages·1991·18.667 MB·English

by  Sarah Whatmore (auth.)

FARMING WOMEN
Farming Women
Gender, Work and Family Enterprise
Sarah Whatmore
Lecturer in Geography
University of Bristol
M
© Sarah Whatmore 1991
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1s t edition 1991
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First published 1991
Published by
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Whatmore, Sarah
Farming women: gender, work and family enterprise.
1. Agricultural industries. Family farms
I. Title
338.642
ISBN 978-1-349-11617-1 ISBN 978-1-349-11615-7 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-11615-7
For my parents
Contents
List of Figures, Tables and Maps IX
Preface and Acknowledgements xi
List of Abbreviations xiii
1 Introduction 1
Feminism and family enterprise 1
Women and farming 4
Concepts and themes 7
Structure of the book 10
2 Family Farming 12
A challenge to theory 12
External constraints 15
Internal resilience 19
Recent developments 24
3 A Feminist Reconstruction 28
The elusive family 28
Beyond the unity of capital and labour 30
Patriarchal gender relations 34
Domestic political economy 43
4 Theory into Practice 46
Making women's work count 46
Macro and micro analysis 49
Fieldwork and methods 51
5 Women's Work and Property 65
Patriarchy or life-cycle? 65
Gender divisions of family labour 66
Patriarchal labour relations 73
Patterns and problems 82
6 'Being the Farmer's Wife' 86
Ideology and the labour process 86
Family ties and working lives 87
Contrasting ideologies of wifehood 92
Processes and problems 102
vii
viii Contents
7 The Domestic Political Economy of Six Family Farms lOS
Two faces of family farming 106
The family farm in transition 117
Family farming under strain 127
8 Conclusions 139
Rethinking family farming 139
Shifting perspectives 144
Appendix: Survey Questionnaire 149
Notes and References 158
Bibliography 168
Index 184
List of Figures, Tables and
Maps
Figures
2.1 The 'double specification' of agrarian petty commodity
production 14
2.2 The position of farming in the 'agroindustrial complex' 17
2.3 Autonomous and market-dependent reproduction 23
3.1 Dualistic approaches to production and reproduction 38
3.2 Production, reproduction and livelihood 39
4.1 A relational typology offarm enterprises 55
4.2 Distribution of farms across the typology matrix, by
study area 56
4.3 Distribution of responses to the survey of 'farm wives'
by farm type for each study area 58
7.1 Household structure at Holly Farm 108
7.2 The labour process at Holly Farm 109
7.3 Budget structure at Holly Farm 110
7.4 Household structure at Naylors Farm 112
7.5 The labour process at Naylors Farm 114
7.6 Budget structure at Naylors Farm 116
7.7 Household structure at Fountain Farm 119
7.8 The labour process at Fountain Farm 120
7.9 Budget structure at Fountain Farm 122
7.10 Household structure at Castleton 124
7.11 The labour process at Castleton 125
7.12 Budget structure at Castleton 127
7.13 Household structure at Vale Farm 129
7.14 The labour process at Vale Farm 130
7.15 Budget structure at Vale Farm 132
7.16 Household structure at Rough Farm 134
7.17 The labour process at Rough Farm 135
7.18 Budget structure at Rough Farm 137
ix
x List of Figures, Tables and Maps
Tables
4.1 Selected features of farms in Dorset and the
Metropolitan Green Belt 54
4.2 The case studies 61
5.1 Women receiving resistance with domestic household
labour 67
5.2 Women's agricultural labour 68
5.3 Women's agricultural labour, by farm labour type 70
5.4 Women's non-agricultural farm labour 72
5.5 Women's ownership of land, by farm type 75
5.6 Women's ownership of capital, by farm type 75
5.7 Women's independent income, by farm type 78
5.8 Women's ownership of capital in relation to their
agricultural labour 79
5.9 Women's participation in decision-making, by farm
~ ~
5.10 Women receiving pay, by farm type 82
Map
4.1 Geographical location of the study areas 52
Preface and
Acknowledgements
Farming Women presents a reassessment of family farming at a time
when family enterprise is gaining in significance and interest beyond
the farming arena. The book offers a feminist critique and recon
struction of petty commodity production, the concept widely used to
describe various forms of small-scale production for the market based
on family, or household, labour and property. Through a detailed
study of family farming in England, the political economy of family
based production is examined as a unity of household and enterprise,
intimately structured by patriarchal gender relations.
Placing women at the centre of analysis, the book challenges the
prevailing invisibility of women in farming and family enterprise, and
portrays their distinctive experiences as 'farm wives'. I am deeply
indebted to all the women (and their families) who took part in the
research. I should particularly like to thank those who put so much of
their time and energy into the case studies. My representation of their
lives is not their own, but I hope that it does justice to some of what
they taught me.
This book began life as a doctoral thesis and, despite some
rewriting, still bears the hallmarks of these origins. The research on
which it is based was carried out on a part-time basis, between 1985
and 1988, while I was employed on a larger project on agricultural
change funded by the Economic and Social Research Council and
directed by Professor Richard Munton (University College London)
and Dr Terry Marsden (Southbank Polytechnic). My debt to them in
this piece of research, and much else besides, is enormous. The
Department of Geography at UCL provided a stimulating workplace
and I am grateful to many individuals within it for support of various
kinds. In particular, I should like to thank Professor Ron Cooke and
Claudette John for finding ways of supporting my work beyond the
terms of any contract; Melanie Limb, who patiently introduced me to
microcomputing; Jacqui Burgess and Sandra Wallman for valuable
advice on methods; and Peter Wood for his constructive scepticism.
Peter Jackson deserves special thanks for commenting on two
versions of the full text.
A number of other people also made significant contributions to
xi