Planting, Parenting, and Paperwork: Shifting Gender Relations among Cohabiting Sustainable Farmers in the Young Farmers’ Movement

• In Event: 058 - Regular Session. Food and Agriculture: Seeds, Safety, and Systems

Abstract

This paper bridges agrifood and gender literatures to consider shifting gender relations in the context of family farms operated by members of the North American “Young Farmers’ Movement” (YFM). The YFM is comprised of individuals between the ages of 18 and 35 operating farms as a form of protest in an attempt to make the agrifood system more sustainable. In addition to these broader goals of agrifood system reform, many YFM members are entering into sustainable farming with the intention to support women farmers, while YFM organizations promote gender equity at the farm gate as a key step in remaking the North American food system. However, despite parity in training, outward support by alternative agrifood institutions and actors, and deliberate attempts to resist gender divisions in their farm operations, over time many cohabiting young farmers still come to find themselves in traditionally gendered roles on their farms. Using preliminary data from an ongoing qualitative study, I begin to interrogate the shifting gender relations among cohabiting young farmer partners involved in the YFM. I consider the significance of the family farm as a social relational context at the overlap of two gendered institutions—the family and the farm. In doing so, I problematize the notion of “separate spheres” of labor by examining how in the YFM the division of labor between family and farm is merged. Finally, I illustrate how individuals navigate and negotiate the overlap of both of these two gendered institutions when making decisions about farm and reproductive labor.

Author

• Andrew Raridon, Purdue University