Women in Agriculture Worldwide

Key issues and practical approaches

Amber Fletcher, Wendee Kubik, Amber J. Fletcher

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9781472473080
• eBook ISBN:
  9781134774715
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Over the past two decades, existing documentation of women in the agricultural sector has surveyed topics such as agricultural restructuring and land reform, international trade agreements and food trade, land ownership and rural development and rural feminisms. Many studies have focused on either the high-income countries of the global North or the low-income countries of the global South. This separation suggests that the North has little to learn from the South, or that there is little shared commonality across the global dividing line.

Fletcher and Kubik cross this political, economic, and ideological division by drawing together authors from 5 continents. They discuss the situation for women in agriculture in 13 countries worldwide, with two chapters that cover international contexts. The authors blur the boundaries between academic and organizational authors and their contributors include university-based researchers, gender experts, development consultants, and staff of agricultural research centers and international organizations (i.e., Oxfam, the United Nations World Food Program). The common thread connecting these diverse authors is an emphasis on practical and concrete solutions to address the challenges, such as lack of access to resources and infrastructure, lack of household decision-making power, and gender biases in policymaking and leadership, still faced by women in agriculture around the world. Ongoing issues in climate change will exacerbate many of these issues and several chapters also address environment and sustainability.

This book is of great interest to readers in the areas of gender studies, agriculture, policy studies, environmental studies, development and international studies.

Part I

Women’s agricultural work

Addressing inequality and invisibility

Australia

1Understanding the “local” and “global”

Intersections engendering change for women in family farming in Australia

Josephine Clarke and Margaret Alston

Introduction

Agricultural restructuring in Australia continues as a result of multiple and intersecting challenges. These include declining terms of trade, globalization and its impacts on agricultural markets, ongoing structural adjustment pressures, changing technologies and reduced access to irrigation water, as well as ongoing drought and other weather events that suggest climate changes are escalating and permanent (Gray and Lawrence 2001; Alston and Whittenbury 2012; Smith and Pritchard 2014; Pritchard 2000). Yet, while family farming remains the dominant unit of production in Australian agriculture (Productivity Commission 2005; Commonwealth of Australia 2014), in recent decades structural adjustments have resulted in a reduction in the number of farmers in Australia: “Over the 30 years to 2011, the number of farmers declined by 106,200 (40%), equating to an average of 294 fewer farmers every month over that period” (Australian Bureau of Statistics 2012, 1). Nonetheless, family farming remains critical to the organization and embodiment of social and gendered roles and responsibilities that support commodity production in an evolving neoliberal economy.

Despite the falling numbers engaged in agriculture, this mode of production continues to ensure the persistence of agriculture as a male-dominated enterprise. For example, recent national statistics suggest that women comprised 28 percent of the farming workforce in 2011, representing a slight decline on 1981 statistics (30%). This is in stark contrast to women’s increased participation in other workforce occupations (Australian Bureau of Statistics 2012) and suggests significant barriers have yet to be overcome. Regardless, the pressures of restructuring have significant consequences for women, particularly as many now work off-farm to facilitate the continuance of their family farm (Alston 2000). We argue that while women do participate in farming and the agricultural industry, there is increasing evidence that restructuring excludes women in new ways.

Recent social research has documented significant changes in agricultural industries and rural communities (Gray and Lawrence 2001; Cocklin and Dibden 2005). Australian rural communities reliant on agriculture are often described as sites where depopulation and farm restructuring are occurring, where farm exits are increasing, services and local businesses are withdrawing, and social relations within rural communities are evolving (Beer and Pritchard 2003; Pritchard and McManus 2000). Further, the impacts of ongoing restructuring include substantial wellbeing issues (Alston 2010; Alston 2012; Price 2010). Thus the interrelationship of agricultural and rural restructuring is an embodied social and gendered experience imbued with diverse responses to managing ongoing change.

Nonetheless, there are emerging efforts to innovate and inspire new relationships that support sustainable food production and new opportunities in rural localities. In this chapter we critique social relations, arguing that in their reshaping in a rapid period of change, these have become even more gendered, leading to an increasingly evident masculinization of Australian agriculture. As a result we argue there is an urgent need for gender mainstreaming in government and industry policies and practices.

Local and global components of agricultural restructuring

There is no doubt there are significant pressures on Australian agriculture – pressures that are not unique to our country, but that have shaped our industries in fundamental ways. While these are potentially economically advantageous for many, they continue to reduce the viability of a large proportion of family farms. Critical amongst these is globalization – the opening up of world markets to competition at the same time as local farmers become competitors in a highly volatile environment. The increasing marketization of agricultural produce keeps farmers on a treadmill of production, frequently involving increased use of chemicals and pesticides to sustain production levels. Price volatility is common and, while those farms that have expanded to be larger-than-family farms may be economically viable, many others are not. In Australia this has led to the need for alternative sources of income and a cost-price squeeze that places significant pressures on families. These pressures are exacerbated in an Australian context by a very evident increase in climate-related events including drought, widespread floods, cyclones, and bushfires. In this volatile environment, we have seen divisive debates over water usage, pitting irrigation farmers against environmentalists, and a questioning of the sustainability of agricultural practices (Alston et al., 2016). At the same time structural adjustments are reshaping communities that serve agricultural industries and family farms. Small communities across Australia have experienced declining populations, reduced services, low levels of transport and telecommunications access, and declining access to education and employment options. It is against this background that we examine the way Australian women engage in agriculture.

Women in Australian agriculture

Previous feminist social research has investigated the role of women in farming in Australia (Alston 1995; Alston 2000). This research has exposed women’s on-farm roles and responsibilities and farming women’s self-advocacy, and critiqued the power dynamics imbued in farm structure, family farming, rural social life, and more broadly in the agricultural industry (Pini 2004; Alston 2000; Alston 1998; Alston 2003; Liepins 1996). This research has investigated the extent to which women’s work supports agricultural productivity and family-farm survival, and more recently has sought to understand how this operates in the context of experiences of managing drought and climate change (Alston and Whittenbury 2012; Alston 2006a; Alston 2006b). Women’s work in farming is interpreted as involving both on-farm and off-farm work that supports family farming. This dichotomy of women’s on- and off-farm work has also been interpreted as effectively a significant subsidy to food production (Kubik 2005).

Further, there is a gendered differential in the experience of agricultural and rural restructuring and climatic variations and this can involve substantial coping issues for women. For women involved in family farming – and this includes the many dimensions of their work to support the continuation of the family farm – managing the impacts of climate change and drought is a further component of industry and rural restructuring (Alston and Whittenbury 2012).

Concurrent with the research findings that document and value women’s work on-farm, and promote opportunities for women in farming, there is emerging evidence that women have been leaving farming independently of their partners, either by physically moving away from the farm to work and/or disengaging from the enterprise (Clarke 2015). This turning away of women is further exacerbating the trend in Australia (and elsewhere) for agriculture to become increasingly masculinized (Alston and Whittenbury 2012; Clarke 2015; Brandth 2002). While the main feature of this “leaving” is women’s participation in off-farm work as a farm survival strategy to address farm income shortfall, additional factors include new technologies that require less on-farm labor, objections to chemical use, and the patrilineal and patriarchal nature of farming practices more generally. Yet the farm/off-farm dichotomy is also challenged by changes in the social relations of agriculture such as the increasingly common practice of male farmers commuting to the farm, and women pursuing separate livelihood opportunities in rural communities (Clarke 2015). Thus the dominance of “the farm” is challenged not only in farm exit processes as a result of multiple restructuring pressures, but also as women increasingly do not participate in farming, or leave farming prior to their partner due to concerns for (and objections to) their view that the current social relations of farming are unsustainable. Many women perceive farming life as stressful, difficult, and lacking equitable opportunities, and hence view current arrangements as socially unsustainable (Alston and Whittenbury 2012; Clarke 2015).

To engender change for women in farming in Australia – and to promote equality of opportunity – the authors propose that the social sustainability of agricultural production urgently requires attention to gender-based inequalities within the industry and family farming to be addressed. On the one hand patrilineal inheritance practices and a male-dominated industry social norm significantly reduce women’s access to farming as an occupation. On the other, in the face of multiple pressures and a nebulous recognition from industry and government of their efforts to support the agricultural industries, many women are losing their commitment to farming. Among a range of strategies, new opportunities for women to enter farming are required. Much research into the social impacts of restructuring focuses on mapping the detrimental aspects of globalization and neoliberalism, and the process of “leaving farming” is understood as a response to restructuring pressures. However, we extend our understanding of “leaving farming” to include acknowledging that women also leave farming often independently of their partner, due to objections to current practices in farming, and pressures associated with coping with, and managing, the impacts of drought and climate change, as well as their exclusion via inheritance practices.

This is an uncomfortable place in feminist rural social research: we wish not only to document gender inequality but also to advocate for new and equitable opportunities for women in farming, to improve the sustainability of farming in Australia. “Sustainability” is a varied discourse (see Black 2005) with multiple meanings contingent on the context whether it be industry, government policy in support of the agricultural industry, local community-based articulations of future scenarios, or individualized situated knowledge. Articulations of what is, is not, and can be sustainable, inform new opportunities in dynamic agricultural restructuring processes. Consequently, the authors note that working towards more socially sustainable farming practices requires attention to the processes that maintain gendered structures and practices in a time of significant agriculture and industry restructuring.

As Brandth (2002) notes, the discourse of the family farm has been a focus of much previous research seeking to understand gender relations in farming. This discourse and the hegemonic masculinity associated with it has, and continues to be, substantially critiqued by feminist social researchers (Alston 2000; Shortall 1999; Brandth 2002). The discourse of the family farm is by no means static: it reveals multiple gendered subject positions thereby suggesting change is possible, indeed necessary, to support gender equality in agriculture. In coming to terms with practical ways to address how family farming can be revised to support gender equality, we consider gender mainstreaming as a critical factor in building understanding, new knowledge, and new forms of social relations. We then examine recent government and industry documents that paradoxically reveal both the possibility of change and a lack of a gender mainstreaming framework that may make it this change unachievable.

Gender mainstreaming

Gender mainstreaming is a policy process adopted widely across the world as a result o...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Information
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• List of contributors
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction Context and commonality: Women in agriculture worldwide
• Part I Women’s agricultural work: Addressing inequality and invisibility
• Part II Gendering sustainability and food security
• Part III Women’s empowerment in policy and finance
• Part IV Working for social change
• Index