Jennifer Charoni

March 7, 2013
Ramamurthy, Winter 2013
JSIS 345 Response and Reaction Paper 2: Gender, Agriculture, Land Rights
Women involved in farming in the Global South represent an interesting intersectionality:
often a part of a socioeconomic minority as members of the rural poor, themselves an oppressed
group, women represent a sometimes unwelcome minority within a minority. Women in rural
farming situations also experience unique socially constructed gender roles to which assumptions and
grouping would create inaccuracies: acceptance of women into farming communities varies widely.
Therefore, my question is: how do the different social constructions of womens roles in society
affect 1) their ability to participate in farming and 2) their ability or willingness to protest against
inequality in their own economies?
The abilities of women to improve their positions and ability to work in an agricultural
environment are dependent on pre-existing social conditions but are always challenging. Most
peasant and farm organizations are male dominated (Desmarais 408). La Via Campesina, a
transnational peasant movement, was originally lead by all men (Ibid), and required seven years and
much protesting from women across borders and intersectionalities to allow appropriate gender
parity (Desmarais 411). This luxury of this type of protest and is not always available to all women.
Socioeconomic status often prevents this as traditional gender roles meant that women remained
primarily responsible for the care of families at the same time as being agricultural workers and
political activists (411). Land is worked by women under different social relations as labourers, as
own-account household labour and as farm managers, to name just a few writes Jackson (456),
indicating that agricultural work is in itself not a homogenous category. Data on the feminization of
agricultural wage labour are inadequate (Ibid) in that they dont account for this difference and
could simply be an upper-class woman minimally involved with the management of her husbands

farm. This placement of upper-class over lower-class is part of existing social fabric transnationally
and does not represent progress for women. Upper-class women have, for centuries, worked less than
lower-class men and had more power than members of the male working class in a way that didnt
break societal gender assumptions.
These differences also affect the intensity of the need of women for political change, and thus
their involvement in it. Many women have a stake in their husbands performing the role of provider
effectively, and may, for good reason, not wish to see this challenged or disrupted writes Jackson
(473). While a study in Nepal suggests that children of mothers who own land are significantly less
likely to be severely underweight (USAID 1), if a family is not wanting for food, the greater input
by women in decision making is not necessary to improve an already health family.
Social construction can also manifest in law, which sometimes outweighs more progressive
legal action. In Afghanistan, The Civil Code establishes that religious law governs property rights
and inheritance law generally. However, it specifically recognizes customary law in the case of
womens property rights (USAID 8) meaning that customary law overrides whatever progress for
women that may have been established.
Hence, the progress of women in agriculture is affected by society in a variety of ways: from
the familys socio-economic status (which affects the time a woman can contribute to protesting or
working for a cause and her necessity to do so), to the intermingling of cultural and social structures
and law, and to the solidarity and involvement of those around her. What, then, is the most effective
circumstance/ position/ socio-economic construction which causes women to work for their own
rights through involvement in the economy and protesting?