Presenter Information

Elizabeth K. Brake, Duke University

Start Date

12-6-2011 9:30 AM

End Date

12-6-2011 12:00 PM

Subject Areas

North America, modern, class, family, gender, labor/business, politics

Abstract

A business history analysis of American family farms provides scholars with the opportunity to re-examine the role women played in twentieth-century industrialized agriculture.  Though an initial and brief analysis of the family farms who participated in the Master Farm Family program in South Carolina in the 1950s, I argue that elite farm women made a much greater contribution to the family farm enterprises than has been generally understood.  First, I argue that women’s homemaking activities and community involvement, long assumed to be social activity that upheld the families’ class status, were in fact crucial to their farms’ economic success.  Second, I argue that women’s involvement was by no means restricted to such activities and that women participated in the productive and business pursuits of the farm generally in partnership with their husbands.  This is contrary to contemporary dominant notions of women’s roles in progressive agriculture.  Women’s multifaceted involvement in their farm’s economic success can be illuminated by a business history approach.

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Jun 12th, 9:30 AM Jun 12th, 12:00 PM

Re-imagining the Family Farm: New Roles and Old Limitations for Women in Industrial Agriculture

A business history analysis of American family farms provides scholars with the opportunity to re-examine the role women played in twentieth-century industrialized agriculture.  Though an initial and brief analysis of the family farms who participated in the Master Farm Family program in South Carolina in the 1950s, I argue that elite farm women made a much greater contribution to the family farm enterprises than has been generally understood.  First, I argue that women’s homemaking activities and community involvement, long assumed to be social activity that upheld the families’ class status, were in fact crucial to their farms’ economic success.  Second, I argue that women’s involvement was by no means restricted to such activities and that women participated in the productive and business pursuits of the farm generally in partnership with their husbands.  This is contrary to contemporary dominant notions of women’s roles in progressive agriculture.  Women’s multifaceted involvement in their farm’s economic success can be illuminated by a business history approach.