Farm Women: Driving Tractors and Negotiating Gender
##plugins.themes.bootstrap3.article.main##
##plugins.themes.bootstrap3.article.sidebar##
Published
Jan 5, 2005
Barbara Pini
Abstract
This paper uses data from focus groups with eighty women involved in the Australian sugar industry, and draws on feminist post-structural theory to explore the construction of gendered identities in on-farm physical work. The key focus is on the strategies women engage to negotiate their gendered subject positions while undertaking a role typically defined as “men’s work”. Findings are compared with a similar study undertaken by Brandth in 1994. While many of the strategies adopted by the cane farming women to manage gender are similar to those described by the Norwegian farming women in the previous study, one “new” discursive strategy has emerged by which women may claim both a feminine subjectivity and involvement in tractor work. This is the adoption of a “farm as business” discourse. This discourse reconstitutes the “farm” as a “business” and the “farmer” and “farm wife” as “business partners”. While this may provide a discursive space for women to be legitimate actors in all aspects of the enterprise, the paper concludes by drawing attention to the factors that make it unlikely that such a possibility will be realized.
How to Cite
Pini, . B. . (2005) “Farm Women: Driving Tractors and Negotiating Gender ”, The International Journal of Sociology of Agriculture and Food. Paris, France, 13(1), pp. 1–18. doi: 10.48416/ijsaf.v13i1.313.
##plugins.themes.bootstrap3.article.details##
References
Alston, Margaret. 1995. Women on the Land: The Hidden Heart of Rural Australia. Kensington: University of New South Wales Press.
Alvesson, Mats and Due Billing, Yvonne. 1997. Understanding Gender and Organizations. London: Sage.
Alvesson, Mats. 1998. “Gender Relations and Identity at Work: A Case Study of Masculinities and Femininities in an Advertising Agency.” Human Relations 51:969-1005.
Baines, Susan and Wheelock, Jane. 2000. “Work and Employment in Small Businesses: Perpetuating and Challenging Gender Traditions.” Gender, Work and Organization 7:5-56.
Bartky, Sandra Lee. 1990. Femininity and Domination: Studies in the Phenomenology of Oppression. New York: Routledge.
Brandth, Berit.1994. “Changing Femininity: The Social Construction of Women Farmers in Norway.” Sociologia Ruralis 34:27-149.
Brandth, Berit.1995. “Rural Masculinity in Transition. Gender Images in Tractor Advertisements.” Journal of Rural Studies 11:23-133.
Brandth, B. and Haugen, M. S. 2000. “From lumberjack to business manager: Masculinity in the Norwegian forestry press,.” Journal of Rural Studies 16: 343-355.
Bryant, Lia.1999. “The Detraditionalization of Occupational Identities in Farming in South Australia.” Sociologia Ruralis 39:36-261.
Butler, Judith. 1990. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge.
Collinson, David and Hearn, Jeff. 1994. “Naming Men as Men: Implications for Work, Organization and Management.” Gender, Work and Organization 1 (1).
Faulkner, Wendy. 2001. “The Technology Question in Feminism: A View from Feminist Technology Studies.” Women’s Studies International Forum 24 (1):79-95.
Follo, Gro. 2002. “A Hero’s Journey: Young Women among Males in Forestry Education.” Journal of Rural Studies 18 (3).
Glesne, Corrine and Peshkin, Alan. 1992. Becoming Qualitative Researchers. London: Longman.
Gray, David E. 2004. Doing Research in the Real World. London: Sage.
Gray, Ian, and Lawrence, Geoffrey. 2000. A Future for Regional Australia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Henson, Kevin D. and Krasas Rogers, Jackie. 2001. “‘Why Marcia You've Changed!’ Male Clerical Temporary Workers Doing Masculinity in a Feminized Occupation.” Gender and Society 15:218-38.
Hopton, John. 1999. “Militarism, Masculinism and Managerialisation in the British Public Sector.” Journal of Gender Studies 8:71-82.
Hughes, Annie. 1997. “Rurality and ‘Cultures of Womanhood’”. In Contested Countryside Cultures: Otherness, Marginalisation and Rurality, edited by Paul Cloke and Jo Little. London: Routledge.
Kvande, Elin. 1999. “In the belly of the beast. Constructing femininities in engineering organizations.” European Journal of Women’s Studies, 6:305-328.
Leckie, Gloria. 1993. “Female Farmers in Canada and the Gender Relations of a Restructuring Agricultural System.” The Canadian Geographer 37:212-30.
Liepins, Ruth. 1996. “Reading Agricultural Power: Media as Sites and Processes in the Construction of Meaning.” New Zealand Geographer 52:3-10.
Liepins, Ruth. 1998. “Fields of Action: Australian Women's Agricultural Activism in the 1990s.” Rural Sociology 63:128-56.
Liepins, R. 2000. “Making men: The construction and representation of agriculture-based masculinities in Australia and New Zealand”. Rural Sociology 65: 605-620.
Liladhar, Janine. 2000. “From the Soap Queen to the Aga-Saga: Different Discursive Frameworks of Familial Femininity in Contemporary Women's Genres.” Journal of Gender Studies 9:5-12.
Little, Jo 1997a. “Constructions of Rural Women's Voluntary Work.” Gender, Place and Culture 4:197-209.
Little, Jo 1997b. “Employment Marginality and Women's Self-identity.” In Contested Countryside Cultures: Otherness, Marginalisation and Rurality, edited by Paul Cloke and Jo Little. London: Routledge.
Little, Jo and Austin, Patricia. 1996. “Women and the Rural Idyll.” Journal of Rural Studies 12:101-11.
Lobao, Linda and Meyer, Katherine. 2001. “The Great Agricultural Transition: Crisis, Change, and Social Consequences of Twentieth Century US Farming.” Annual Review of Sociology 27:103-24.
Lupton, Ben. 2000. “Maintaining masculinity: Men who do ‘women’s work’”. British Journal of management. 11 (1): 33-48.
Mackenzie, Fiona. 1992. “‘The Worse It Got, the More We Laughed’: A Discourse of Resistance among Farmers of Eastern Ontario.” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 10: 691-713.
Mackenzie, Fiona. 1994. “Is Where I Sit, Where I Stand? The Ontario Farm Women's Network, Politics and Difference.” Journal of Rural Studies 10:101-15.
Marshall, Judi. 1984. Women Managers: Travellers in a Male World. Chichester: Wiley.
Mason, Jennifer. Qualitative Researching. London: Sage.
McRobbie, Angela. 1996. “More! New Sexualities in Girls' and Women's Magazines.” In Cultural Studies and Communication, edited by James Curran, David Morley and Valerie Walkerdine. London: Arnold.
Mellstrom, Ulf. 2004. “Machines and Masculine Subjectivity.” Men and Masculinities 6 (4):368-82.
Miles, Matthew and Huberman, Michael. 1994. Qualitative Data Analysis. Thousand Oaks: Sage.
Oldrup, Helene. 1999. “Women Working off the Farm: Reconstructing Gender Identity in Danish Agriculture.” Sociologia Ruralis 39:343-58.
Patton, M. Q. 1990. Qualitative Evaluation and Research Methods. Newbury Park: Sage.
Pini, Barbara. 2002. “Focus groups and farm women: Opportunities for empowerment in rural social research.” Journal of Rural Studies 18 (3): 330-351.
Pini, Barbara. 2003a. “Feminist methodology and rural research: Reflections on a study of an Australian agricultural organization”. Sociologia Ruralis 43 (4): 418-433.
Pini, Barbara. 2003b. “We could have had the old girl out in the paddock years ago: Widowed women, farming and agricultural leadership.” Work, Employment and Society. 17 (1): 171-182.
Pini, Barbara. 2004a. “Gender and farming in the information economy.” Australian and New Zealand Journal of Communication. 31 (2): 135-148.
Pini, B. 2004b. “On being a nice country girl and an academic feminist: Using reflexivity in rural social research.” Journal of Rural Studies 20 (2):169-179.
Pini, Barbara. 2004c. “Paternalism and managerial masculinities in the Australian sugar industry.” Rural Society. 14(1): 22-35.
Pini, B. 2005. “The third sex: Women in leadership in Australian agriculture.” Gender, Work and Organisation. 12 (1): 73-88.
Pringle, Rosemary. 1998. Secretaries Talk: Sexuality, Power and Work. Sydney: Allen and Unwin.
Probyn, E. 1996. Outside Belongings. New York: Routledge.
Qualitative Solutions and Research. 1999. NUD*IST VIVO for Qualitative Research. Melbourne: La Trobe.
Roulston, Kathy and Mills, Martin. 2000. “Male Teachers in Feminized Teaching Areas: Marching to the Beat of the Men's Movement Drum?” Oxford Review of Education 26: 221-37.
Sachs, Carolyn. 1996. Gendered Fields: Rural Women, Agriculture and Environment. Boulder: Westview Press.
Saugeres, Lise. 2002. “Of Tractors and Men: Masculinity, Technology and Power in a French Farming Community.” Sociologia Ruralis 42 (2):143-59.
Shortall, Sally.1999. Women and Farming. Property and Power. London: Macmillan.
Shortall, Sally. 2000. “In and Out of the Milking Parlour: A Cross-National Comparison of Gender, the Dairy Industry and the State.” Women's Studies International Forum 23:247-57.
Strategaki, Maria. 1988. “Agricultural Modernization and Gender Division of Labor.” Sociologia Ruralis 28:248-61.
Teather, Elizabeth. 1998. “The Double Bind: Being Female and Being Rural: A Comparative Study of Australia, New Zealand and Canada.” Rural Society 8: 209-22.
Wajcman, Judy. 1991. Feminism Confronts Technology. Cambridge: UK Polity.
Wajcman, Judy. 2004. Technofeminism. Cambridge: Polity.
Weedon, Chris. 1997. Feminist Practice and Poststructuralist Theory. Blackwell: Oxford.
West, Candace and Zimmerman, Don H. 1987. “Doing gender.” Gender and Society 1: 125-51.
Williams, Christine. 1989. Gender Differences at Work: Women and Men in Non-Traditional Occupations. University of California Press: Berkley.
Yodanis, Carrie. 2000. “Constructing Gender and Occupational Segregation: A Study of Women and Work in Fishing Communities.” Qualitative Sociology 23:267-90.
Alvesson, Mats and Due Billing, Yvonne. 1997. Understanding Gender and Organizations. London: Sage.
Alvesson, Mats. 1998. “Gender Relations and Identity at Work: A Case Study of Masculinities and Femininities in an Advertising Agency.” Human Relations 51:969-1005.
Baines, Susan and Wheelock, Jane. 2000. “Work and Employment in Small Businesses: Perpetuating and Challenging Gender Traditions.” Gender, Work and Organization 7:5-56.
Bartky, Sandra Lee. 1990. Femininity and Domination: Studies in the Phenomenology of Oppression. New York: Routledge.
Brandth, Berit.1994. “Changing Femininity: The Social Construction of Women Farmers in Norway.” Sociologia Ruralis 34:27-149.
Brandth, Berit.1995. “Rural Masculinity in Transition. Gender Images in Tractor Advertisements.” Journal of Rural Studies 11:23-133.
Brandth, B. and Haugen, M. S. 2000. “From lumberjack to business manager: Masculinity in the Norwegian forestry press,.” Journal of Rural Studies 16: 343-355.
Bryant, Lia.1999. “The Detraditionalization of Occupational Identities in Farming in South Australia.” Sociologia Ruralis 39:36-261.
Butler, Judith. 1990. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge.
Collinson, David and Hearn, Jeff. 1994. “Naming Men as Men: Implications for Work, Organization and Management.” Gender, Work and Organization 1 (1).
Faulkner, Wendy. 2001. “The Technology Question in Feminism: A View from Feminist Technology Studies.” Women’s Studies International Forum 24 (1):79-95.
Follo, Gro. 2002. “A Hero’s Journey: Young Women among Males in Forestry Education.” Journal of Rural Studies 18 (3).
Glesne, Corrine and Peshkin, Alan. 1992. Becoming Qualitative Researchers. London: Longman.
Gray, David E. 2004. Doing Research in the Real World. London: Sage.
Gray, Ian, and Lawrence, Geoffrey. 2000. A Future for Regional Australia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Henson, Kevin D. and Krasas Rogers, Jackie. 2001. “‘Why Marcia You've Changed!’ Male Clerical Temporary Workers Doing Masculinity in a Feminized Occupation.” Gender and Society 15:218-38.
Hopton, John. 1999. “Militarism, Masculinism and Managerialisation in the British Public Sector.” Journal of Gender Studies 8:71-82.
Hughes, Annie. 1997. “Rurality and ‘Cultures of Womanhood’”. In Contested Countryside Cultures: Otherness, Marginalisation and Rurality, edited by Paul Cloke and Jo Little. London: Routledge.
Kvande, Elin. 1999. “In the belly of the beast. Constructing femininities in engineering organizations.” European Journal of Women’s Studies, 6:305-328.
Leckie, Gloria. 1993. “Female Farmers in Canada and the Gender Relations of a Restructuring Agricultural System.” The Canadian Geographer 37:212-30.
Liepins, Ruth. 1996. “Reading Agricultural Power: Media as Sites and Processes in the Construction of Meaning.” New Zealand Geographer 52:3-10.
Liepins, Ruth. 1998. “Fields of Action: Australian Women's Agricultural Activism in the 1990s.” Rural Sociology 63:128-56.
Liepins, R. 2000. “Making men: The construction and representation of agriculture-based masculinities in Australia and New Zealand”. Rural Sociology 65: 605-620.
Liladhar, Janine. 2000. “From the Soap Queen to the Aga-Saga: Different Discursive Frameworks of Familial Femininity in Contemporary Women's Genres.” Journal of Gender Studies 9:5-12.
Little, Jo 1997a. “Constructions of Rural Women's Voluntary Work.” Gender, Place and Culture 4:197-209.
Little, Jo 1997b. “Employment Marginality and Women's Self-identity.” In Contested Countryside Cultures: Otherness, Marginalisation and Rurality, edited by Paul Cloke and Jo Little. London: Routledge.
Little, Jo and Austin, Patricia. 1996. “Women and the Rural Idyll.” Journal of Rural Studies 12:101-11.
Lobao, Linda and Meyer, Katherine. 2001. “The Great Agricultural Transition: Crisis, Change, and Social Consequences of Twentieth Century US Farming.” Annual Review of Sociology 27:103-24.
Lupton, Ben. 2000. “Maintaining masculinity: Men who do ‘women’s work’”. British Journal of management. 11 (1): 33-48.
Mackenzie, Fiona. 1992. “‘The Worse It Got, the More We Laughed’: A Discourse of Resistance among Farmers of Eastern Ontario.” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 10: 691-713.
Mackenzie, Fiona. 1994. “Is Where I Sit, Where I Stand? The Ontario Farm Women's Network, Politics and Difference.” Journal of Rural Studies 10:101-15.
Marshall, Judi. 1984. Women Managers: Travellers in a Male World. Chichester: Wiley.
Mason, Jennifer. Qualitative Researching. London: Sage.
McRobbie, Angela. 1996. “More! New Sexualities in Girls' and Women's Magazines.” In Cultural Studies and Communication, edited by James Curran, David Morley and Valerie Walkerdine. London: Arnold.
Mellstrom, Ulf. 2004. “Machines and Masculine Subjectivity.” Men and Masculinities 6 (4):368-82.
Miles, Matthew and Huberman, Michael. 1994. Qualitative Data Analysis. Thousand Oaks: Sage.
Oldrup, Helene. 1999. “Women Working off the Farm: Reconstructing Gender Identity in Danish Agriculture.” Sociologia Ruralis 39:343-58.
Patton, M. Q. 1990. Qualitative Evaluation and Research Methods. Newbury Park: Sage.
Pini, Barbara. 2002. “Focus groups and farm women: Opportunities for empowerment in rural social research.” Journal of Rural Studies 18 (3): 330-351.
Pini, Barbara. 2003a. “Feminist methodology and rural research: Reflections on a study of an Australian agricultural organization”. Sociologia Ruralis 43 (4): 418-433.
Pini, Barbara. 2003b. “We could have had the old girl out in the paddock years ago: Widowed women, farming and agricultural leadership.” Work, Employment and Society. 17 (1): 171-182.
Pini, Barbara. 2004a. “Gender and farming in the information economy.” Australian and New Zealand Journal of Communication. 31 (2): 135-148.
Pini, B. 2004b. “On being a nice country girl and an academic feminist: Using reflexivity in rural social research.” Journal of Rural Studies 20 (2):169-179.
Pini, Barbara. 2004c. “Paternalism and managerial masculinities in the Australian sugar industry.” Rural Society. 14(1): 22-35.
Pini, B. 2005. “The third sex: Women in leadership in Australian agriculture.” Gender, Work and Organisation. 12 (1): 73-88.
Pringle, Rosemary. 1998. Secretaries Talk: Sexuality, Power and Work. Sydney: Allen and Unwin.
Probyn, E. 1996. Outside Belongings. New York: Routledge.
Qualitative Solutions and Research. 1999. NUD*IST VIVO for Qualitative Research. Melbourne: La Trobe.
Roulston, Kathy and Mills, Martin. 2000. “Male Teachers in Feminized Teaching Areas: Marching to the Beat of the Men's Movement Drum?” Oxford Review of Education 26: 221-37.
Sachs, Carolyn. 1996. Gendered Fields: Rural Women, Agriculture and Environment. Boulder: Westview Press.
Saugeres, Lise. 2002. “Of Tractors and Men: Masculinity, Technology and Power in a French Farming Community.” Sociologia Ruralis 42 (2):143-59.
Shortall, Sally.1999. Women and Farming. Property and Power. London: Macmillan.
Shortall, Sally. 2000. “In and Out of the Milking Parlour: A Cross-National Comparison of Gender, the Dairy Industry and the State.” Women's Studies International Forum 23:247-57.
Strategaki, Maria. 1988. “Agricultural Modernization and Gender Division of Labor.” Sociologia Ruralis 28:248-61.
Teather, Elizabeth. 1998. “The Double Bind: Being Female and Being Rural: A Comparative Study of Australia, New Zealand and Canada.” Rural Society 8: 209-22.
Wajcman, Judy. 1991. Feminism Confronts Technology. Cambridge: UK Polity.
Wajcman, Judy. 2004. Technofeminism. Cambridge: Polity.
Weedon, Chris. 1997. Feminist Practice and Poststructuralist Theory. Blackwell: Oxford.
West, Candace and Zimmerman, Don H. 1987. “Doing gender.” Gender and Society 1: 125-51.
Williams, Christine. 1989. Gender Differences at Work: Women and Men in Non-Traditional Occupations. University of California Press: Berkley.
Yodanis, Carrie. 2000. “Constructing Gender and Occupational Segregation: A Study of Women and Work in Fishing Communities.” Qualitative Sociology 23:267-90.
Issue
Section
Articles
CC BY 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/
You are free to:
Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format
Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially.
This license is acceptable for Free Cultural Works.
The licensor cannot revoke these freedoms as long as you follow the license terms.
Under the following terms:
Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.
No additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.