Between societal expectations and the realities of shared farm labor. Good morning, everyone. Todays lecture and on invisible farmers. And what were going to do today is take a historical overview to look at women and womens role in u. S. Agriculture. And the title for the lecture today on invisible woman actually comes from a 1983 book, ancient in your mind, but a book thats over 30 years old by carolyn sachs. And sachs book was really groundbreaking in that she was one of the first to examine the contributions of women to u. S. Agriculture and it was this work that helped launch work by sociologists and other social scientists, rural historians and so forth to look at the contribution of women that had largely been invisible up until this time. So this is a nod to their groundbreaking book. So one of the Big Questions weve been asking in this class, and posing since the first day that we meet is why should we study women in agriculture . Why not just study agriculture . Why should we take a gender lens and think about the different roles that men and women play . Why . Thats what weve been asking. Thats one of the Big Questions, right . And so what weve been arguing, what ive been arguing and what other scholars argue is that why we want to study women in agriculture specifically, why we want to take a gender lens and not just talk about agriculture in general is that women have always played a really Critical Role in feeding us, in clothing us, and sustaining rural communities, either farm families, increasingly help fuel our society. And this is everywhere. Not just in the u. S. When we just talked about agriculture, womens critical contribution was largely invisible. When we did see it, and well talk about this in the lecture, when we did acknowledge it, when we did see it, it often wasnt valued the same as mens contribution. Okay . And in some cases, it simply wasnt counted at all, okay . In addition the other component that weve been arguing over why should we study women in agriculture, why should we take a gender lens, is because theres an important gender gap in agriculture. Women dont have the same accesses to resources that men do. They dont have the same access to Productive Resources like land and capital, they dont have the same access to opportunities in leadership and education and so forth. And if we want to respect gender gap, first we have to understand what is the issue, whats the problem . If you dont know about it, you dont know how to solve it, okay . For us to solve it, we specifically have to think about men and women and gender relations. Thats what weve been arguing in this class. So what we want to do today is we are posing two questions, and these are questions were going to be answering throughout the lecture, throughout the semester, so two questions. Why have women and their contributions been visible and why and how is there a gender gap within agriculture. These are the two Big Questions. Today were going to look at three examples to examine these questions. Were going to look at farm identity, were going to look at farm ownership, and were going to look at farm labor. And specifically today were going to take a Historical Perspective on this. So moving forward with the semester, were going to unpack these issues as they are today, but for us to understand how we got to where we are today, we want to look at what is what do these examples look like historically. Thats our goal today. And what im going to be arguing today based on the social science and the historical literature that has looked at women, womens invisibility, the gender gap, what im going to be arguing is that there are many Different Reasons for this but one important reason is this idea of the agrarian ideology. And by ideology, what we mean is a set of beliefs that underpin our politics and economy. So this ideology is a set of beliefs. And the agrarian ideology which im going to unpack in a few minutes but fundamentally whats critically important for you to remember is that this ideology in terms of thinking about the family farm assumes that the family farm is split into two different spheres, the farm and the household. And within these two different spheres, women and men play very different roles. Two spheres with men and women playing two different roles. So as an ideology, because ideologies are not necessarily grounded in truth. One of the things were going to be looking at is how powerful this ideology is and yet when we look at the reality on the ground, it doesnt really reflect what we see in terms of the family farm in the u. S. So to put some boundaries on what were talking about today, our focus is on the family farm and were really going to be looking, were going to be picking out the history of the family farm since the 1860s and really from the time of the homestead act. Those are our boundaries. If were thinking about the family farm, it has some important geographical dimensions. The family farm is most represented in the midwest where we are here in iowa in the great plains. And it largely affected white men and women. So on thursday were going to turn our attention to the experience of africanamerican women which also had an important dimension in the south in terms of slavery and sharecropping agricultural. What were talking about is not a universal experience among every women everywhere, but has some important historical and geographical and structural dimensions to it. So what do we mean when we talk about the agrarian ideology and the family farm . So agrarianism is a very old ideology, thousands of years old. And this ideology is rooted in the belief that farmers have economic and political primacy over other industries. That farming is the most valuable, the most moral of all industry and all economic endeavors. So in the u. S. When we think about agrarianism, its Thomas Jefferson, our third president , who most clearly embodies the idea of agrarian ideology. So Thomas Jefferson spoke about agrarianism, he wrote about it and was perhaps the most influential in shaping this idea. So when jefferson talked about agrarianism, he framed it specifically in relation to family farms. Jefferson as we all know was actually a slave owner. Perhaps theres some irony there. But in terms of developing the republic in the u. S. , jefferson argued in favor of, you know, taking the land that was taken from native americans, that it should be disposed of among people who wanted to work it. So if you wanted to work the land, you should have the right to own your own property. So Thomas Jefferson is in favor of widespread ownership of what are we doing to do about this . Okay. So Thomas Jefferson was in favor of widespread ownership of the land. So whats important when we think about how influential this ideology was is that if we think today when most think about farming, they think about family farming. There have been many different structural forms of agriculture in the u. S. Were going to talk about, again, slavery, sharecropping on thursday as an example. So part of the way we can appreciate how influential agrarian ideology was is that because it influenced our idea, our perception that farming is predominantly family farming where the people who own the land should work the land. So agrarianism was what scholars called a gendered ideology. In thinking about the family farm, jefferson put forth the view that the family farm was two different spheres. So even if we call it family farm, were thinking of this unit. But he had this unit of it being two different spheres. The farm and the household. And within those spheres, women and men would play very different roles. So here his view, which, again, its incredibly influential, his view was that men would be the property owners, men would be the agriculture producers. If you own property that gave you the right to engage in Civic Affairs for the early part of our history, also to vote, and that women, this sphere would be the household. They wouldnt own property and they would be responsible for caring for the house. They wouldnt be engaged in agriculture production. And that their role was really to support the endeavors of the male farmer. Okay . So this was jeffersons argument. So jeffersons his view of dispersion of the land and control of that land by family farmers really you know, when we think about our history here in the u. S. , really its the homestead that we think of as being the fruition of this agrarian view of land settlement. I know we all learn about the homestead act which was enacted in 1862. This gave anyone who wanted to work the land including women the ability to own 160 acres, they were given that land for free, so long as they worked it. They stayed on it for five years and so forth they were entitled to it. This was a really important act mostly in the midwest and the great plains. If we look at farm numbers, what we see is this act together with other things, development of the railroads, markets, and development of institutions like universities and so forth. What we saw after that was the explosion in the number of farms. In 1860 we had less than 2 million farms in the u. S. By 1935 when it peaked, we had almost 7 million. 6. 8 million. That was the peak of the number of farms. So this was an incredibly important act together with a whole number of other endeavors that led to the family farm. But, again, the family farm was viewed as having these distinct spheres with these distinct roles for men and women. So, what scholars argue is that when we think of the agrarian ideology, and, again, were going to illustrate this through examples today, is this ideology has been extremely influential. If we look at our social institutions, if we look at policies, laws, education and so forth, we see it reflected in those. If we look at attitudes and values and believes with an individual or familial or community or societal, we see this ideology permeating through our attitudes and beliefs. Again, this idea, okay, that within the family farm, the family farm has primacy. We value it normally. But within that, we have clearly different roles for men and women who operate within different spheres. So were going to look at three different examples to illustrate the agrarian ideology and our goal today is to bring it back to those questions we pose. What we want to try and think about is what effect has this agrarian ideology has on, one, womens invisibility within agricultural, and, two, the gender gap. So if we think about why does it matter that the farm is separated from the household. How does that influence womensr gap . Thats what were going to be thinking about. First were going to look at agrarian identities, and were going to look at a short clip of a commercial of so god made a farmer. Maybe i should ask how many of you have not seen this commercial . Okay . Okay. A small hand full have not seen this commercial. So this was a commercial that ran during the 2013 super bowl. It was advertising does anyone even remember what it was advertising . Dodge trucks. What kind of trucks . Dodge. Dodge . Dodge ram. Dodge ram trucks. At the end of the commercial, youll see a truck. I think you see other trucks as well. So it ran during the super bowl, and it was an incredibly emotional and impactful commercial. People loved it. Since that time theres been over 23,000 views of this commercial. Articles have been read about it. People slovloved this commercia. Were going to watch it. I want you to think about the images in the commercial, but i also want you to think about the language thats being used. So what youre hearing is actually a speech by paul harvey who was a conservative radio broadcaster, and the speech is from 1978. So we can see that its a few decades old and is being used. And as we watch it and as we listen, what i want you to think and you can jot down some notes because youre going to come back and share it with the rest of the class. One of the reasons i like to show this video is i think its a really nice example of the agrarian ideology. And so think about how is the farmer represented . How is the identity of the farmer represented . What kinds of traits are associated with the farmer . How are men and women represented in this commercial . Okay . And on the eighth day god looked down on his planned paradise and said i need a caretaker, so good made a farmer. God said i need somebody willing to get up before dawn, and then go to down and stay past meeting with a meeting at the school board so god made a farmer. God said i need somebody willing to stay up all night with a newborn colt and watch it die and dry his eyes and say maybe next year. I need somebody who can shape an ax handle and make harness out of hey wire, planting time and harvest season will finish his week and put in another 72 hours, so good made a farmer. God said i need somebody Strong Enough to clear trees and gentle enough to wean pigs and tend who will stop his mower for an hour to splint a leg, so god made it farmer. He had to plow deep and straight, seed, weed, weed, plow, plant, tie the fleece and strain the family. Someone who would build a family with soft strong bonds of sharing. Who would laugh and then sigh and then reply with smiling eyes, when his son says that he wants to spend his life doing what dad does. So god made a farmer. I cut it off. Sorry, george. So take a minute. Chat with your neighbor or not, but think about how the agrarian ideology is captured in this film and think about how farmers are represented. How they found the identity of the farmer, and how its represented. Dont worry about writing down too much. Its more just jot notes to think about. Who wants to volunteer and tell us what you saw or what you heard . In terms of how the farmer and farming is represented . What are some immediate things . I mean, the audio is directed extremely toward men since all it does is reference the farmer and the male, but the images come back and it shows females doing odds and ends work. Its extremely bipolar to whats being presented. The text and the images focus largely on men. Very nice. I felt like at the beginning it started with nongender language. It needed to be someone who. I think toward the end we got into the more man ideal, but i think it did still shine a light on women, especially since this was from back in 1978. Not nearly as much as it could have, but i dont think they were ignored either. Women werent entirely excluded from an in effect the language at the beginning was all and collusive and thinking about it historically. I think even the language is very not gender bias until it says and when the young boy looked at his dad and said i want to do what dad does. Thats when you get the fact that its a male. But its just that image in our mind and the masculine voice, and that voice is very deep. It kind of gives you the idea that the farmer is a male. Because the images they show a variety of different people from older men and women who are hardworking and you could tell they spend their days in the field to the next generation of the former standing in front of the fields. I think its kind of the voice that says something. Thats a nice point. All the ways we pick things up. How different might we have interpreted this image . If it had been a womans voiceover and its paul harvey, a man, but perhaps that automatically makes us think that what were talking about is men. Nice. The gender bias, even with the one part, i feel like every dad, everywhere wants his son to grow up to be just like him. I think a stockbrokers dad probably wants his kid to be like well, i want my kid to think im pretty cool. I dont catch a lot of gender bias, but its hard to take something made in 1978 where it was very male dominated traditionally and turn it into something where we are now, but i think it was paul harvey that they wanted to use just because of the tradition of what he was. He was so well known for his ad marketing and what not. Influential. Part of it is because were looking at this historically. Theyre taking a historical speech and putting it onto contemporary images. Did anyone have another take on how thinking about the different spheres, were talking about family farming. So last year what we saw was the farm. Right . What sort of images of the household did we see in terms of the family farm with a house as integral . Right . Integral to family farming. Also the video showed some of women and men in the house together. They bring food to the guys in the field and go back and work on the house. They bring the family together through the house. Yeah. But its the male, the head of the household and the language is bringing them together. I think what shes saying, per that language, it says as part of the farmers job is to mend the family together. So its almost talking about the same person. So if you already think there is gender bias between that and then you kind of see them as the head of the household, versus the Woman Holding everything together. Yeah. Okay. Very cool. So one of the things when we think about family farming, the household is integral. Well talk about that as we move through the lecture. The household is less visible in this image. The focus is on the productive aspect. If you look at women, were talking about family farming. Family farming. Women, i think there are three images of women out of the 18. Someone counted them up once. Okay . There are some women. But theres not many of them. So men are dominant in the images. And again, as one you of commented, the image we see is the boy will take over the farm, and, of course, most of us as was mentioned, you know, often want our children to take over what weve done, but we can also interrogate that which is what were going to do. So if we think about the agrarian ideology, and this clip the intent of it was to really help illustrate how both historically, because you guys pointed out that the speech is historical. 1978. Both historically but even today, the power of the agrarian ideology. Where we see these spheres differently, and we see the roles of men and women on family farms as quite distinct. And we can think about that in terms of the identity of the farmer. So when we talk about farmers, when we talk about family farming, the farmer is typically identified as male. Okay . So we have these strong images of men often working independently. You know, working outside. Working with crops and livestock and machinery. These are the primary images that we get of the family farm. That the farmer is a male. And when we think about the traits that are associated with the farmer, they are masculine traits. Things we associate with men often being very strong, being independent. Being tough. Being persistent. You could see the men in the images. They were creative with the different challenges. They were resilient in overcoming the challenges that nature and others presented to them and so forth. And part of this helps us, again, come back to that idea of agrarianism. It helps us recognize why the status of farmers is so high in the u. S. So if you do a survey of the american public, farmers have a really high status. And family farms have a really high status. And part of it is because of this idea that farmers embody so many of the traits that we think are really important and that we value in the u. S. Again, independence, hard working, resilient. These kinds of language that we use when we talk about farmers. And this is good. This is important. The critique is that when we look at this, the contributions from women and even children, but thats not our focus today. The contributions of women are largely invisible. Again were talking about a family farm. A family farm. Not a mans farm. A family farm. Okay . Where are the women . We didnt see them a lot in that video clip. When we talk about women on family farms, we dont call them farmers. We dont call them farm women. Historically and predominantly today we call them farm wives. Okay . So women on family farms, how we identify them is not in relation to the work that they do, but their marital relationship. Its different for men and for women. We can see the historic roots. Jefferson and others at the time argued strongly that white women should not be engaged in farm production. This was not the view they had of black women which well talk about on thursday. In terms of white women on family farms the argument was they should not be working unless their husbands died or they were in poverty. Womens place was in the home as wives and mothers supporting their husband, taking care of the household and the children and so forth. And to justify this, womens role, you know, we associate what they do with strong traits of femininity. So one of the things we can ask ourselves is so what. Right . So what. Men are farmers and women are farm wives. Men are responsible on the farm. Women in the household. Who cares . Right . What scholars argue is that this belief that women didnt really contribute to farming and farm production, that their role on the productive side was largely invisible, had very real material consequences. And we could say very real kw s consequences for men, but also for families. The example i want to give because its related to us being here at iowa state university, is this idea that men and women are operate in different spheres, had implications for the kind of education that men and women received. So in 1914 the smithlever act was passed. The smithlever act established the agriculture and Home Economics extension service. The idea with the passing of this act was that land grant institutions such as ours, iowa state university, would provide education for farm families. This education would be based on science and the idea was that it was to help them be successful farm enterprises. But because of the agrarian ideology, when men and women operate in different spheres, women were just taking care of the house and it was men who were the farmers, the education that was established had different programs for men than for women. Okay . So men learned the science in terms of what was needed in terms of farm production. How to grow crops. How to look after livestock, deal with machinery. Women learned the science for the domestic sphere. How to cook, how to preserve, and the photo that you see here from state Agriculture College in colorado, women are learning how to make butter which was seen as womens preserve. Does it matter . So the problem is that it didnt reflect men and womens actual lives on the farm. We have ideology that separates men and women that makes womens contributions invisible that has material consequences and wasnt a real reflection of the lives on family farms. This is a quote. The photo was not the person speaking but i thought it would be nice to have a photo up there. This is a woman. She wrote, i weigh 120 pounds. I milk seven or eight cows night and morning. Run a separator, get breakfast, supper. Do all the washing and cleaning and garden work. I mend, read, but i dont have time to rest as we have a 200acre farm. And this letter comes from a series of letters from women who are writing saying, i cant get the kind of education i need. I mean, its good to learn things about making butter and skills i need in the kitchen, but i do so much more than that, and i need to learn these other things. The education is not reflective of my real needs. One of the other arguments was that because womens role in the productive and the reproductive side of things was that their concern which at this time was primarily cause for more laborsaving technology, was not being heard. So women were saying we dont just work in the household. We are doing all these different roles and we need you guys to be investing. We need the government and land grant institutions to be investing in equipment that can save us time. Not just the men on farms. So this notion of these different spheres we can look at not and i pulled out a couple of examples to illustrate how strong this ideology is that we can look at policy, education. We can look at art. We can look at media, and we can see its influence. So you guys know this painting. Right . So wheres grant wood from . Yeah. Iowa. This is one of the most probably one of the most famous paintings in the u. S. Okay . Had lots of people people have folked lots of fun and done lots of things to this image. This is a really well known piece of american artwork from the 1930s. So how is the representation of the farmer and the farm wife conveyed here . How do we know one is a farmer and one is a farm wife . The man has a pitch fork. Right . That doesnt help you cook very well. So yeah. Man has a pitch fork. What else . The wife seems to have an apron on. Yeah. She does. And he has his overalls. So this is actually a farmer and his daughter although most people dont know that. Youd have to probably read about it. Most people look at them and think its a farmer and his wife, but again, heres the image of the farmer. Hes doing farmwork and on this family farm, shes the wife, the daughter, doing nonfarm work. Shes got an apron on. Heres an example from an advertisement, a post world war ii advertisement for a tractor. This idea of the separate spheres between men and women. The guy is going off on his lovely new tractor. Hes going off to farm. And the wife has her apron on and her nice dress. Shes going to stay home and take care of the domestic sphere. Hes the wife, the mom and shell also be looking after the daughter. Again, perpetuating the notion among society at large about this view of the family farm that didnt exist. Okay . And i put this. This is a recent example from 2017. I thought this was interesting. Again, just thinking about the language that we use to describe men and women on family farms. So this was from a local newspaper. And it was an article about an award these two the long neckers had received. The 2017 cattleman of the year award. The longneckers have a cow calf operation and operate a fertilizer company. You delve into the article. It talks about them working together so they own everything together. They work together. They describe them as a tag team. But the man is identified as a farmer, and shes identified both in the title and in the text as the wife. Now, i want to be careful, because for many women, this role of farm wives, were going to look at this more later on in the class. This idea of farm wives gives them status and prestige as well. Okay . Its not to diminish this title or to negate it in that sense. Again, the main argument is it doesnt really reflect accurately the role that women do on family farms. So it makes it can make their contributions partially invisible. So the second example i want to look at in terms of thinking about how is the agrarian ideology contributed to making womens role invisible or contributing to this gender gap . So if we think about the gender gap within agriculture, one of the most significant gaps is that in terms of land ownership. So historically men have had access to land and ownership of that land and women have not. Historically. Remember . Were doing a historical overview. Were going to look at how thats changed later in the class. And this is not insignificant. This is materially incredibly important, because land is so significant in terms of generating wealth for individuals or families, can provide power, status. In the early days of america, of course, it meant that you could vote. When you could only vote if you owned property. Land everywhere is important. What we inherited were laws and views from britain that were embodied in agrarian notions around the family farm, and that is that property should be owned by men. Okay . What we can call it is a patriarch system. The land is owned by men, controlled by men, and passed down through generations of males. Betwe i like to bring up the power of social norms. We talked about that last week. So initially women werent allowed legally to own land or property. Once they married. And this was the law of coveture. Women when they married were considered to become really an appendage to the male. She didnt have an independent existence. Wives were not allowed to own property and they werent allowed to earn their own income. Okay in theyre really just a dependent on the male. Thats the law in the u. S. We inherited it from britain. Those laws were overcome. Women fought against them, and they were overcome in the 19th century, but then what weve seen is the power of social norms. If you remember from last week, the informal roles about how we are supposed to behave. And what we said last week is the social norms can actually be more powerful than the law themselves in terms of influencing how we think and hoour values and how we behave, and they can be really difficult to challenge. So casting our mind back to jefferson, and thinking about the historical roots of the social norms, again, the idea was that women were supposed to be subordinate to husbands. That in contrast to men working on the land did not entitle you to property. And what we saw right through until the last couple of decades was considerable inequities between men and womens ownership and control of land and related assets. Okay . So women really held joint ownership of the land. They really signed for loan they rarely signed for loans. Vehicles and wimt were rarely in their names and legal records often didnt account for their economic contributions. Important discrepancies between men and womens control and ownership and power over related means and assets. What this means is that was fine probably, so long as your family relationships were good. What happens, though, if a major dissolves . Or women want to work or women want to make some different decisions about their property . So this is a quote from the 1970s. For me this feels like very recent history that explains for 20 years ellen worked alongside her husband to keep their wisconsin farm profitable. During a typical 12 hour day she milked the cows, cared for the chickens, helped plant, harvest, strip the tobacco crops. They agreed to share their farm revenues until they divorced in the 1970s. And the court ruled that all profits from the farm belonged to mr. Skaar. In marriage he was legally entitled to his wifes services. Hopefully well have some time to come back later in the semester and look at so we have these laws related to land. The major ones were overturned in the 19th centuries but different pieces of them didnt get overturned until the 1980s for some of them. Okay . So women could be left with nothing. So youre in a family farm. You work. You think youre sharing something, but if you divorce, its all for naught because youre not entitled to the land. All the profits from your labor. So thinking about today, what weve seen since world war ii is and how many remind me, how many of you are from farms . A bunch of you are from farms. Lots of you. So you know that since world war ii farms have weve had a lot fewer farms. Right . So it peaked in the 1930s. The number of farms have declined. But the fares that have remained have become larger and more specialized. If you want to be successful today, you have to have a pretty large farm thats fairly highly capitalized, fairly highly specialized and crops or livestock and so forth. What that means is that for anyone who wants to get into farming, good luck. Right . If you dont inherit the farm, its almost impossible to get into farming. To raise the kind of capital to buy the land. Whats an acre of land now in iowa . 8,000. 15. It depends on the quality of the land. 8,000 to 15,000 an acre. So to be able to purchase land. The machinery, the equipment, and so forth. Almost impossible to get into farming. So even for men its hard. So if you want to get into farming, you better hope that you were born into a farm family and you get to inherit it. So for men its hard. Its even harder for women. Okay . So put this up here just to sort of illustrate again, there are no laws barring women from inheriting land. There are no laws. And if youre divorced now, its going to be completely different than what confronted ellen, but there are important social norms which mean that even today daughters are less likely to inherit land than sons are. Even if they want to inherit it. So how would you explain that . How would you explain it . What do you think attributes for this difference in terms of how would you explain why boys are more likely to inherit land than girls . Or sons than daughters . How would you explain it . Are they just born that way . I have an older brother, and he always helped my dad on the farm, and hell definitely take it over one day, so t just kind of how it fell. Okay. So you have a brother. He always helped your dad on the farm, and hes likely to take over the family farm. Its just the way things go. Any other thoughts . I feel like boys are more interested in farming earlier than girls. Boys why is it . Genetic . I dont know. How they they are more willing to jump in right away and get their hands dirty while a girl, are more likely to stay inside and stay in the comfort zone. So girls are likely to stay inside. Not want to get dirty and poboy are more interested. I feel like thats not thats just forced into what were supposed to do. People just assume that we want to stay inside because when i was growing up, i wanted to go outside, but my uncle would be like no, stay inside and play with some barbies or something. Some barbies. That will help prepare you for im not sure what barbies help prepare you for. Its what society wants to mold us into. I think Society Norms definitely exist for the men too. Women are expected to be indoors and be the nurturers. Men are like youre going to take over the farm so you need to come out and learn how to operate machinery and learn how to do this, and that social norm plays into them inheriting the farm later on. Very nice. Okay. Great. Great comments. And if we look at the research, the social Science Research on this which helps us understand what is it . Why even today when we think of men and women being equal, that we see this discrepancy, this gender gap in terms of who is inheriting the land . Is it really that were born different . Is it really simply can we explain that women arent interested . What you guys articulated is exactly right. We can look at the socialization process, and we talked last week about how all kinds of people not just our parents, but our neighbors and our uncles and grandparents, television, influence how we think we should behave. What roles we think are appropriate. Whether we should display more m masculine and feminine traits. No one tells us were supposed to do it. We learn it. We pick up social cues from our mothers and fathers and other people about how were supposed to behave and maybe if we try to bend the rules, we get reprim d reprimanded. If we look at the family farm, we see the pair of the socialization where youre exactly right. Right from the time boys are little, theres just this again, unspoken assumption but boys are encouraged to get on the equipment, learn how to use the equipment, play with the machinery and engage in productive farming in a way that women are not. And when people look at whats one of the biggest obstacles to women getting into farming and to taking over land, its machinery. So if women havent learned from parents and others to be comfortable around machinery, to know how to use it, you know, attach implements, fix it, talk about it, you know, deal with the smell and everything, if youre not familiar with it, it can make women both feel inadequate because then theyre depending on men to deal with the equipment, and it can make other people not see women as real farmers. Machinery is a real barrier between women seeing themselves as farmers and other people seeing themselves as farmers. As a reflection of the socialization process. So the last example i want to talk about in terms of thinking about this agrarian ideology is in terms of farm labor. Men must toil from sun to sun but a womans work is never done. Thats a very old adage. Weve probably all heard a variant on it. And so here again we want to think about how is this idea, agrarian idea, that the farm and the households should be separate. How has this contributed to womens invisibility . And the gender gap . What were going to argue, what scholars argue based on the research is this idea, and weve already hinted at it through the commercial and talking about the farmer identity. That the problem with this ideology is it doesnt capture womens full contributions which means that we often as a society arent aware of how women contribute, or when we know what they do, we dont think theyre of the same value as what men contribute on family farms. And i put out this quote, because i think its lovely. The magnitude of womens input and the centrality to farm production have not been carefully assessed in a way that evaluated and rewarded them so meagerly. Not fully accounting for womens contribution and acknowledging it and rewarding it. So were going to look at two aspects of this. The productive role and the reproductive role. So the productive role is typically within this ideology what we think of when were thinking about what happens on the farm. So the productive role is what we produce for market and home consumption and income. Its the work that we do that is considered to have some productive value. Use value, exchange value, and so forth. So if we think about historically what women have contributed on family farms, according to jefferson and other proponents of agrarianism, women are simply in the home. Right . Doing the domestic labors. In fact, all the Research Tells Us thats that is not at all what women have done historically. Their roles have changed. Okay . We can look, women far long periods of time until the early part of the 20th century were engaged in they were responsible for milking the cows, collecting eggs, raising chickens, it could be for home con jumsumption or the market. They were primarily responsible for growing food for the household, maybe selling some of it. And as we talked about as farms have become more specialized, womens roles have also shifted. So now how many moms are primarily responsible for the bookkeeping and the accounting . Does anyone have a mom hands up. Okay. A bunch of you. A bunch of you from family farms, your moms are primarily responsible for the bookkeeping, the accounting. Its a role that strongly is associated with women. And what we see increasingly today is womens importance in terms of off farm labor. If you look at usda data, United States department of agriculture data, theres an enormous proportion of family farms that could not sustain themselves without the contribution of farm labor. Someone in the household or more than one person working off farm to bring in an income to help sustain the Farm Business. How many of you have someone in your family farm who works off farm to help bring an income . Okay. A chunk of you. So really important. So again, we often think of that as separate, but the family farm often couldnt survive without that income. Whats really interesting when we look at how women talk about themselves, how other people talk about women, is how internalized it is that okay, they might be doing this productive labor, but its not really maybe what is the primary job or they should be doing, and so the language that gets used typically talks about women as being more in a supportive role. As the helper, the help mate of the farmer. And we say this over and over again. Its fascinating. We see language such as filling in, helping, doing what needs to be done. This is how women and other people talk about women when theyre doing productive labor in relation to the family farm. So this is actually from a book that came out this year. Heres a photo of a woman operating a tractor. It says shes assisting with field work. Shes not doing fieldwork. Shes not farming. Shes not shes assisting. Okay . This is from some of the most important Ground Breaking work that helped make visible womens role on the farm. She did a lot of in depth interviews with women. What was really revealing was how women talked about themselves. So here is a woman saying i dont help a lot. Im just helping. Im assisting. When im needed. And then she goes onto explain everything she does. I care for the calves, bottle feed them. I carry the milk out and drive the tractor when my husband needs me. I shovel corn at harvest team. During hay making im out there every day and sometimes i work in the feedields. I dont do a lot. Im just helping out. But we can imagine if what would happen if she wasnt contributing. Okay . Is this simply helping or is this an essential contribution to sustaining the family Farm Business . So again, part of what were trying to demonstrate today is that how we talk about men and women, how we imagine them to be on the family farm, have very real material consequences. And the example to illustrate this is the United States department of agriculture census. Its conducted every five years, and it tells us, i dont know, everything we need to know about farming, but a lot. It calls itself the voice of agriculture. The census has been around since 1840. It tells us who is farming, where are they farming, how much are they farming . What are they farming . How much are they earning . A lot. Okay . But because women because of the power of this ideology that women didnt actually contribute to the productive side, so the usda didnt even bother collecting data on them. Because it was assumed that they didnt really play an Important Role. So we dont even have to count them. They werent counted until 1978, almost 140 years later. How many censuses were done to understand the full picture of agricultural production, oh, but we wont talk about half of it. I dont know how many of you have parked fworked for policy r commodity groups or researchers to know how important this data is, and how widely its used to develop policy, programming, extension, education. So again, if youre thinking we had all this information to develop all these important things but we didnt include women . It can lead to those things where again well train women how to make butter, but not how to care for livestock. So women played Important Role in terms of productive labor, but also reproductive. And so this is what again agrarians think this is the appropriate role for women. This is what they do and this is what they should do. They shouldnt be working from productive labor. They should be at home raising children, cooking, cleaning, washing and so forth. The point here is that women regardless of how much work they had to do on the farm, still had to come home and take care of their domestic responsibilities. Right . So it doesnt matter how much you were helping or assisting, there were still kids to feed and food to cook and beds to make. Which this poem illustrates where this woman is saying when she returned home after working the fields all day, her domestic toils inses end play. People talk about this idea of the second shift. There also this idea of the third shift, but the second shift. It doesnt matter how much youve worked all day, you still have all these domestic responsibilities awaiting you. So the point here is that we know that women do this work. We often dont acknowledge how indispensable it is to sustaining the family farm. To the success of the family farm. We wouldnt have family farms if we just had men on farms. Right. You need families to reproduce the next family who is going to inherit that farm. Women ea womens domestic role was important. Paul harvey talked quickly, but he has a line about the farmer worked all day in the fields and then he comes and eats supper and goes and spends all evening at a school board. We what doesnt get mentioned, comes and eats his supper. Who did the shopping or the cooking or doing the dishes . Who did the work that allowed you to come in from the fields and who put the kids to bed and bathed and so forth . Again, its not to diminish either peoples roles, which are both important, but to fully acknowledge both of them. Okay . So this idea that womens reproductive work is often undervalued. That its seen not as work but as natural. Its like women just do this automatically. You know . Were naturally mothers. We naturally want to care. We naturally want to cook and clean and so forth. So what i want to finish up with now is in this class, moving forward, were going to think about the different ways that this agrarian ideology is changing, has been challenged and is changing. And what i want to do is just to think about okay, weve been thinking about this history since 1860s. Whats a historical example of how this agrarian ideology was challenged. Whats a historical example that shows how women challenge this idea that women just worked in the household, that we didnt contribute anything important, that were not capable of being farmers and so forth. I wanted to finish up with this as a little bit of fun. I think weve heard of rosie the riveter who is the cultural icon in the u. S. , showing the Important Role of women who went to work in the factories and the shipyards and so forth when men went off to war. And the farm equivalent were the farmerettes and tractorettes. Has anyone heard of them . No historians in the class. Okay. This would be a fun project, i think. In world war i, we had the accomplishment of the womens land army. So this was an initiative to take women from the city or towns or from farms themselves to work in farm roles. They were known as farmerettes. Women shockingly wore pants which you didnt do in those days, who wore pants but learned how to drive horses, who plowed and harvested. Who planted and so forth. Who did the roles that were necessary in terms of farm production. And, of course, there were all those questions, are women Strong Enough . Are they capable . Wont the smell put them off . Women dont like getting dirty, do they . Here are women challenging the stereo types about appropriate roles for men and women. The second one is from world war ii, the tractorettes. And this was an initiative that International Harvester was centrally involved in. The equipment dealer. And this was an effort, again, you have men going off to war. Who is going to produce the food . How can we sustain the farm . Okay . So we needed more women to be engaged in farmwork. And so this is a whole program. Theres these beautiful pictures of outdoor classrooms and so forth. You had dealers go out and train women, educate women so women had to learn how to operate machinery, attach implements. They had to learn how to fix the equipment and of course, do different farmwork if they werent familiar with it. So, again, a nice example. We often assume a lot about what we think men and women can do, should do. And often we continue to think that until something disrupts our thinking and i think these historical examples about what women did in world war i and world war ii which we know theyre doing all the time within the family farm, its just that the rest of society often doesnt know it because of how we talk about farm families and men and women. So how are many of these ideals, beliefs, and stereo types challenged . So just to conclude, so what were trying to argue today is this agrarian ideology, you know, which has been with us, which jefferson was a powerful proponent of, has played a really Important Role in shaping how we as a society think about family farms. How we as a society think about the appropriate roles for men and women on those farms. How we identify who is a real fa farmer, and implicit in that, what is not a real farmer. And i put the quote up by brandt, buzzecause i really thi it captures what were trying to say about the agrarian ideology. The way we speak about men and women on farms may not correspond to the way they really are. If youre from a farm and you know what your family knows, you would have a sense of how much of a problem this idea is. That it doesnt accurately reflect what takes place on a family farm. And womens full contribution. So again, coming back to why does this matter . Why do we care . So weve tried to highlight a couple of examples of where this ideology has had important social and material consequences. Okay . Where womens critical contribution is often invisible or undervalued, and that this has had consequences in terms of the kind of education women might get. Where the women are expected to take over the farm. We can think of other examples that we can talk about later in the semester, but things well have guest speakers talk about this. If youre not considered a farmer, why would a banker loan you money . And what well find is women were discriminated against in terms of getting bank loans because bankers and others didnt see them as real farmers. Or they didnt have the collateral because their name is not on the bank. Its a real consequence. Not seeing women as full participants, full contributors on family farms has had very real consequences in terms of limiting womens full participation and engagement on farms. And what were talking about now is a lot of focus is on what we want to we want people to be engaged in agriculture. Producing food, sustaining agricultural systems in the u. S. Is incredibly important and one of the most exciting things is were seeing increasingly, women want to be part of this. So what were going to turn to now, were going to discuss throughout the semester what weve seen in this century. Its a growing effort by men and women to break down the grass ceiling. Okay . Men as well have been eager to help mow the grass ceiling. Plow. Plow the historical inequities within agriculture. What weve been seeing and were going to talk about this. Now that we have a sense of the history, where have we been, we can see the importance of challenging some of the social norms and discourses around family farms and the contributions of men and women. And we see men and women challenging that. We see women increasingly asserting the identity of farmer that women may maybe women on your farm its similar. Women increasingly saying im not a farm wife. Im a farmer as well as my husband or my husband works our farm and im the farmer. Women are asserting the identity. Women increasingly working to access, close the gender gap, access the resources they need to be successful farmers and well see examples of women are creating new networks and organizations to help them be successful, to get the training and the skills they need to be successful. And i think all of this is helping us to increasingly see women. So thank you, and we will see you on thursday. Coming up, the legend and legacy of thursday. Coming up here on cspan 3 the legend and legacy of amelia earhart. Followed by a 1974 film on the women imfact on the navy and then africanamerican women in the sports world through the generations, and later a look at women voters and their impact on the 2016 election. Were featuring American History tv in prime time this week as a preview of whats available every weekend on cspan 3. Tonight with many colleges and universities closing campuses were giving you the opportunity for your own Distance Learning with ah tvs lecture in history series. Well feature American History classes from universities in the Atlantic Coast conference including clemson, university of North Carolina chapel hill, wake fors and duke. Seth jacobs from Boston College tips off the night with a class on president Lyndon Johnson and the escalation of the vietnam war. American history tv tonight at 8 00 p. M. Eastern on cspan 3. American history tv products are now available at the new cspan online store. Go to cspanstore. Org to see whats new for American History tv and check all of the cspan products. Amelia earhart tried to fly around the world in 1987 but didnt