Finding ‘Room to Manoeuvre’: Gender, agency and the family farm
Date
2014Author
Byrne, Anne
Duvvury, Nata
Macken-Walsh, Áine
Watson, Tanya
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Byrne, Anne, Duvvury, Nata, Macken-Walsh, Áine, & Watson, Tanya. (2014). Finding ‘Room to Manoeuvre’: Gender, agency and the family farm. In Barbara Pini, Berit Brandth, & Jo Little (Eds.), Feminisms and Ruralities. USA: Rowman and Littlefield.
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Abstract
Women on Irish farms have been a subject of feminist analysis over the past two
decades. Salient themes in the literature on farm women have been the constraints of
patriarchal agriculture (O'Hara 1997; Shortall, 2004), the invisibility of women's farm
work (O Hara 1998), gender inequalities in ownership of farm assets (Watson et al.
2009), increasing professionalisation of farmwomen outside of agriculture (Kelly and
Shortall 2002; Hanrahan 2007); and the need to investigate and theorise property
ownership as an emerging concern. For Shortall (2004) land ownership is the critical
factor underpinning male domination of the occupational category farmer ,
determining the power differentials between men and women in Irish family farming.
Within this research nexus, the central concern of our paper is to explore how
women s property ownership acts to disrupt gender relations within family farms in
Ireland.
Recent evidence suggests that gender inequality in property ownership
continues to be a reality within Ireland. The 1991 Census of Agriculture indicated that
only ten percent of women owned farms, with more than half (56 percent) inheriting
farms on the death of their spouses, positioning widows as the most likely group to be
property owners (NDP GEU 2003, 22). The 2010 Census indicates that women own
just over 12 percent of farms, representing little historical change. Despite this
continued restricted access and limited opportunities for women to acquire ownership
of farms and farmland, we regard instances where farmwomen do own property in
their own right critical for understanding future implications for farm family
agriculture. Does women s property ownership disturb gender relations on the farm?
If so, what are the pathways of the impact on gender relations? Does it enhance
agency for women in decisions made about the family farm? How is the potential
discomfort of the woman property owner as an independent agent negotiated?
In selected cases of farmwomen s experiences of ownership and management
of farm property, we examine women s agency in the context of the complex
relational dynamics that take place in family farming. Reflecting on the importance of
choice, we use an empirical approach that is centred on biographical narrative
analysis to explore how women negotiate farm family dynamics, gendered (and
generational) power relations. We understand gender as a sociological and social
identity category that can be analysed, disturbed and disrupted and is constituted and
reconstituted within power relations (Pini 2008). Taking note of O Hara s (1998, 22)
claim that there is always room to manoeuvre within the frame of family farming,
and understanding women as active participants in consciously shaping own lives and
identities, our analytical concern is primarily with the experiences of farmwomen as
they negotiate the management and ownership of family farm property in
contemporary Ireland.