1' Gender Farming or Farming Gender Women in the Farm Family

1
Lecture 8

• 1. Gender Farming or Farming Gender? Women in the
  Farm Family
• 2. Follow-up to Rousseau on gender and play
  First Nations children, farm children, and other
  children then and now

2
Things

• Posters for mid-term paper ideas (they may also
  be viewed in the part time office Burke 314)
• Presentation Artifacts for next week please
  pick up after class
• Next week Handout outlining mid-term paper will
  be handed out and discussed
• Reminder This month, January, we are focusing on
  the ideas/ideals which we internalize, expect,
  and are accountable for regarding how we
  negotiate through environments according to
  gender, sex, sexuality, and nature. We will be
  looking at the material and then the practical
  aspects of this negotiation in different articles
  in the next two months, respectively. But, we
  could look at all articles focusing on any of the
  parts of the ecological dialogue.

• IMP Environmental Sociology, the philosophy
  driving this course, embraces ALL environments,
  such as what you consider the natural world,
  built environments such as SMU or farms, and even
  emotional or psychic environments such as how we
  are/not surrounded by romantic love.
• Bells ecological dialogue may be applied to any
  environment remember ecology can mean the
  study of ones home, which varies for each one of
  us at different times and in different contextsI
  knowits sometimes hard to hold on to
  definitions in sociologywhich can be the point
  of sociology in the first place.

3
Today

• Presentations
• Lecture
• 1. Farm women 2. Farm children

4
I LIKE TO HOE MY OWN ROWA Saskatchewan Farm
Womans Notions about Work and Womanhood during
the Great Depression

• Christine Bye historian, University of Alberta
  in Edmonton
• WHAT ARE YOU HAVING FOR DINNER TONIGHT?
  Alienation at its worst?
• Contrast the gender experiences of aboriginal
  people in Canada weve just discussed with those
  of farming in North America during the Great
  Depression.
• Wheat prices plummeted stock market
  unprecedented drought ? challenges.
• Canadian Wheat Board established during the Great
  Depression --- continues today.
• Did you know Wheat is NOT indigenous to Canada
  it was introduced through immigration by the
  1600s. Europe became extremely dependent on
  Canadian wheat, like fur, and still is today.
  Canada flies in wheat to refugees who do not
  ordinarily eat wheat.
• When was YOUR first job? How old were you when
  you got your first bank account? Consider that
  the worlds economy is almost entirely measured
  according to the American Stock Market very
  fragile, and recall the pickle the USA is in
  today. Consider the struggles of todays farming
  family.
• Article Setting
• Stock Market in 1929 (who ran the stock market?
  Where were the women?)
• Social Impacts of the Great Depression

5
Half of Canadian Farm Women ran 100 of the
Canadian Farms during the Depression

• Where did the men go? Why? (sort of a reverse
  brain drain from today!)
• Grasshoppers took over what was left of the
  agriculture they even ate the clothes off the
  clothesline.
• Maritimers sent salt codfish to those in the
  Prairieshow did this affect the gender roles of
  Maritimers?

6
Overview of Byes article

• Reflections of her own great-grandmothers
  experience age 63 during the Depression
  handwritten letter-based study (those are called
  primary sources). What have todays ideals around
  communication done to handwritten letters which
  could be potential data? Do you save your
  emails?...How/Will someone be able to examine
  your life in 75 years?
• Letters (more than 150) sent to family from the
  farm showed how the authors great-grandmother
  valued mens work more than womens/her own on
  the farms of the day --- despite her own tireless
  efforts to keep the farm going (Bye states that
  this ideal is still prevalent in farm families in
  Canadian prairies). This also reflected how more
  resources were allocated in the name of men than
  women (ideal material practical).
• This double-standard value system is still with
  us today. Consider this Do we undervalue womens
  work OR do we overvalue mens work? Consider the
  environmental implications of the ideal of
  breadwinner.

7
Bye Historicism is problematic taking history
for granted is dangerous

• Especially since women were absent from the pages
  of history, which Bye considers a loss for
  Canadian Prairie women during the Depression
• Letters and other documentation misrepresent
  those women as complainers. Bye uses her
  great-grandmothers letters as data in an ATTEMPT
  TO UNDERSTAND the gender ideals of that time.
• Bye shows great differences in the ways
  institutions in the USA and Canada treated women
  American government offered more compassion and
  material relief than Canadian officials. (WHO WAS
  PRIME MINISTER DURING THE DEPRESSION? Do you
  think these ideals around women and farming would
  have been different had there been a female prime
  minister in those days?)

8

• Traditional gender roles were strongly
  internalized. Only two roles were represented as
  norm female and male.
• Which ideal was the dominant one in new Canadian
  culture?
• Even so, women were proud of their contribution
  to the family farm in the Bread Basket of Canada.

9

• Byes great grandmother married at 19 and moved
  to McCord, Sask., near the USA border.Consider
  your own position as a student if those ideals
  about marrying young were still intact? What
  would all of you be doing right now?
• (http//ca.epodunk.com/profiles/saskatchewan/mccor
  d/2001445.html)

• Today, farmers in the Prairies depend on money
  from wheat exports and domestic use.
• During the Depression, 1/5 of the population of
  Saskatchewan left the province. Those who stayed
  worked like hell. Little money was around
  basically a barter system was set up. Farm women
  received NO money despite the value of their
  efforts.

10

• Bye (p. 139)
• Rural society touted men as farmers and
  breadwinners in the 1930s, but often it was women
  who kept their families on the land.
• Why do you think this ideal was kept intact? What
  was at stake if the ideal changed to call women
  heads of the farm?

11
Even though women did become the breadwinners of
the family, through bartering household products
they made and services they offered, such as
cleaning, they mainly let on that men were the
breadwinners. This reflected the European farm
family value system of it was natural that men
should work the land.

• Reproductive Variable had Challenges
• Poor nutrition due to famine
• Defying doctors orders of bed rest
• Pregnant women lost their support systems when
  their family and communities moved away
• Pregnant women were often in isolation, far from
  midwives or medical expertise

12
But, it wasnt all Dark Age ideology people
pulled together during the Depression, using
gender role differences to unify the farm
family. From this photo of Polish tobacco farmers
in the USA during the Depression, what are some
cues of distinct gender roles?

• (http//www.edb.utexas.edu/resources/team/lesson_1
  .html)

13
Kates great-grandmother had little patience
with women who failed to pull their weight or to
display the proper attitude (Bye, p. 143).

• This ideal was prevalent among rural farm women
  during the Depression, despite the fact that
  women and land were still considered legal
  properties of men.
• Again - Men were the ideal-ized heads of
  households. Still, gender divisions of labour
  reflect the ones we struggle with today, only the
  public sphere was out there in the fields men
  seeded, harvested, did the work with horses and
  the bank while women were contained within the
  private sphere of the home women generally
  worked in the house and did a limited amount of
  farming, though a more inclusive history would
  likely show that they did more work out than what
  we realize today.
• However, role overlap occurred. It was considered
  helping out the other gender, and was not
  considered serious farming or serious housework.
  Sound familiarever hear this today the dad is
  babysitting his children while his wife is at
  work

14
Bye (p. 147)

• Kates notions blinded her to the integrated
  nature of the family farm. She could not
  appreciate the full extent of womens
  contribution to the enterprise. Nor could she
  value womens and mens efforts equally. No
  matter how hard women worked, in the house or the
  barn, Kate would always see their husbands as the
  farms real operators. Men, being farmers,
  would always be entitled to more rights and
  privileges than women.
• Do you think it was as bad as it sounds?

15
Women put their husbands needs ahead of their
own.

• This represents the gender ideal that it was men
  who opened up the West because they were
  naturally better at working the land than women.
• Women were not allowed to own land and equipment
  if they were married. This challenged the agency
  of rural farm women. You can see that certain
  ideals create vicious circles)
• Even so, many families were egalitarian to a
  degree. Women were allowed to control the
  household domain. They were free to hire female
  servants and buy specific dry goods. But, the
  husband could step in at any time and veto his
  wifes decision within that domain. For example,
  Kate was denied a radio and trips to visit her
  children because her husband said she could not
  be spared on the farm even though she was
  getting a small pension in her old age.

16
Language reflects Ideology

• Farmers Wife
• Women could divvy up the dishes (p. 155)

• Farmer
• Sons inherited farms and land and equipment

17
While these may be the social facts of the days
of the Depression,

• do you think men had it easy on the farm in that
  time?
• What about the pressures on male farmers today,
  given that they are still the heads of
  households --- check out any phone book listen
  to CTV or CBC.
• LETS NOT FORGET HOW MALES ALSO ARE OPPRESSED
  THROUGH OUR IDEAL SYSTEMS OF WHAT WE CONSIDER
  COMES NATURALLY TO A CERTAIN GENDER

18
Any more on the ideals of gender and farming?
19
In Voyageur times and during the Depression,
where did the children play?(1875 photo -
http//images.google.com/imgres?imgurlhttp//www.
barefootsworld.net/images/atplay.jpgimgrefurlhtt
p//)
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WHAT ABOUT SASKATCHEWAN FARM CHILDREN?(1941
photo - http//www.edb.utexas.edu/resources/team/l
esson_1.html)
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And todays kids? (http//msnbcmedia4.msn.com)
22
Last Child in the WoodsSaving Our Children
from Nature Deficit Disorder

• Richard Louv (start clip at 230)
• While watching this, remember Rousseaus advice
  that children (boys) should go off into the
  natural wilderness with a mentor (male) in order
  to find out what they really wanted to do with
  their lives.

23
Any Scouts/Guides in class?

• A different perspective on Iraq

24
Readings for next class (focus on the material
representations in Bells ecological dialogue
things we can sense in Februarys readings)

• (1) CP Shettles, L.B. and Rorvik, D.M. (2006).
  How to choose the sex of your baby The method
  best supported by scientific evidence (pp. 57-65,
  119-123). New York, NY Broadway Books.
• (2) SMUO Gonzalez, A.Q. and Koestner, R. (2005).
  Parental preference for sex of newborn as
  reflected in positive affect in birth
  announcements. Sex Roles, 52 (5-6), 407-411.