Gender roles in agriculture are a frequent subject of study by sociologists and farm economists. Historians also study them, as they are important in understanding the social structure of agrarian, and even industrial, societies. Agriculture provides many job opportunities and livelihoods around the world. It can also reflect gender inequality and uneven distribution of resources and privileges among gender.
In particular, pastoralist, ethnic minority, indigenous and rural women continue to face numerous obstacles when trying to access and control natural resources, technological devices and agricultural services; also, they are not involved in processes of decision-making. Most of the time, such obstacles have their roots in practices of discrimination, which highly influence women's independence.Resurrección et al., 2019
According to the Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, women usually have a harder time obtaining land, tools and knowledge than men, especially in developing countries. Several organizations such as Food and Agriculture Organization and independent research have indicated that increasing gender corporation can bring more profits and food security for the community.
In general, women account for a greater share of agricultural employment at lower levels of economic development, as inadequate education, limited access to basic infrastructure and markets, high-unpaid work burden and poor rural employment opportunities outside agriculture severely limit women’s opportunities for off-farm work.
Women make up well over 50 percent of the agricultural labour force in many sub-Saharan African countries. About half of the labour force in agriculture is female in several countries in Southeast Asia, including Cambodia, the Lao People’s Democratic Republic and Viet Nam.
Women who work in agricultural production tend to do so under highly unfavourable conditions. They tend to be concentrated in the poorest countries, where alternative livelihoods are not available, and they maintain the intensity of their work in conditions of climate-induced weather shocks and in situations of conflict.
Women are less likely to participate as entrepreneurs and independent farmers and are engaged in the production of less lucrative crops. Often, women are unpaid family workers or casual workers in agriculture. Social norms may also constrain women from producing crops and participating in activities dominated by men.
The gender gap in land productivity between female- and male managed farms of the same size is 24 percent. On average, women earn 18.4 percent less than men in wage employment in agriculture; this means that women receive 82 cents for every dollar earned by men.
Global trends While on average women represented 37.8% of all agricultural workers in 2021, this share is above 50 percent in 22 countries, most of them in Africa. Women and men working in agriculture might have different employment status. Generally, the women employed in agriculture are more likely to be engaged as contributing family workers whereas men are more likely to be engaged on their own account as workers generating an income.In addition, women often spend more time than men on activities such as food processing and food preparation for the household, child and elder care, water and fuel collection and other unpaid household duties.
North America United States
The "classical" farm gender roles in the United States, although varying somewhat from region to region, were generally based on a division of labor in which men participated in "field" tasks (animal care, plowing, harvesting crops, using farm machinery, etc.), while most women participated primarily in "farmhouse" tasks (preparing and preserving food and feed-stuffs, and maintaining the farm compound).
According to agro-historian Jane Adams, the middle 20th century brought a change in which the centralization of agriculture eliminated many of the tasks considered part of the "female" role. This changed the perception of women from being active "housekeepers" to passive "homemakers". Some began working off the farm, or joined their husbands in fieldwork, but the majority, per Dr. Adams, simply became more like urban housewives. This trend continued until the 1980s farm crisis, in which economic downturns obliged many of them to take jobs off-farm.
Canada
Gender roles in Canadian agriculture vary greatly according to the region and community.
Alberta, and particularly Southern Alberta, has traditionally had highly defined gender roles similar to the late 19th-century United States. Men worked together and women worked together, but there were few tasks in which both men and women participated together. On most Alberta farms up until the 1970s, decisions about matters such as planning and insurance were done by fiat of the husband, rather than by joint venture of husband and wife. Some writers have considered Alberta's highly gendered division of farm life to be not only inefficient from an agricultural standpoint, but deleterious to the integrity of marriage relationships as well.
In the agricultural tradition of Central Canada there is an emphasis on conjugal (husband-and-wife) collaboration. Major decisions are normally made together, with each spouse having equal decisive power. When extended families live and farm together, couples within the extended family are considered as working "units". This style of family farm management is rather common in the rest of Canada as well.
Quebec agriculture is based on the historic seigneurial system, vestiges of which exist today in the organized district system. Gender roles are sometimes more pronounced in areas where the Catholic influence is strong.
In Southern Ontario the history of agricultural gender roles parallels that of the U.S.A. almost precisely.
Besides these regional generalities, traditions vary among different ethnic and religious communities, such as First Nations (aboriginal), Anabaptist, or historic immigrant settlements.
Across Canada, and also in the United States, the assignment of roles tends to be more egalitarian on organic and Certified Naturally Grown farms than on "conventional" ones.
Europe
Commonwealth of Independent States (former Soviet Union)
Agricultural society in what is now the Commonwealth of Independent States goes back thousands of years, and entails numerous distinct cultures. Slavic-speaking societies tended to follow the general Indo-European pattern of patrilineality, passing down property and rights from father to son. In agriculture this meant land and livestock. The gender roles on the farm presumed that the farm and all its contents belonged to the father or grandfather. Uralic-speaking societies, on the other hand, had a relatively egalitarian system in which land was considered to be the domain of a larger extended family or folk group, without rigid boundaries between individual homesteads. Division of labor was not rigid, and spouses often worked alongside each other, or helped each other with various tasks.
During the Russian Empire period, Slavonic patriarchy was emphasized and promoted to a greater extent across the board. This was especially the case in southern and central Russia during the 18th and 19th centuries, where every farmer or farm laborer was considered to hold a position in the feudal hierarchy of the Empire, until this system was modified in the later 19th century. Men were the official landowners and decision-makers, though women often had a significant amount of unofficial influence in decision-making (on the free peasant farmsteads).
In the years leading up to the Revolution, as the remnants of feudalism disintegrated, many Russian farm families joined artels (артели), or cooperatives. The cooperatives practiced (at least in theory) equal consideration of men's and women's opinions in making collective decisions, which was a sharp contrast to the feudal method. Moreover, as the Empire became more connected by rail and road, the rural residents of central and southern Russia gained knowledge of Uralic-based farm operation systems (which had survived in the north and east). These northern and eastern traditions contributed to the emerging cooperative practices.
After the Revolution, the government was initially supportive toward the artel movement (since it is "collectivist"). When the Stalinist government took power, however, many of the artels were superseded by state farm units (sovkhozy or Совхоэӣ) under control of the central government. The effect on gender roles varied: workers of both sexes were assigned to do similar tasks, but managers and overseers were mostly male, though there was no fixed rule or custom that established this as absolute. Fieldworkers often worked in mixed-gender teams, though in the Caucasian and Middle Asian republics an informal segregation by sex was maintained, following local (and ultimately Islamic) traditions. Throughout the Union, state-farm administrators tended to have little regard for marital relationships: marriage was considered part of the workers' personal lives, which needed not enter into the world of economic labor. Children born or conceived on a state farm were considered "bound" to it, in a concept lent from feudalism.
Later governments, from Krushchev's onward, eased the central control of farms, though certain republics (such as Tajikistan) took up this control into their own state governments, and retain much of it even to this day.
With the 1960s loosening of central administration over agriculture, the cooperative system became once again the main system of large-scale farmland operations in much of the U.S.S.R. This condition has remained ever since, with only minor changes.
Where small and extended family farms exist in the Commonwealth of Independent States, consensus is often a major mode of decision-making, and cooperation a major mode of work. On collective farms as well, conjugal collaboration is a respected and encouraged part of the overall dynamic, and couples often work as units within the larger framework. Exceptions include the Chechenya/Dagestan/Naxcivan region, where all areas of life are highly sex-segregated, and marriage is often an arranged contract by the parents.
Finland
Finnish agriculture tends to follow a modern form of what is recognizably the Uralic system, though the influence of western Europe (particularly in Finland's west half) has brought a greater consciousness of private property. Conjugal collaboration and joint venture are major characteristics of the Finnish farming tradition.
Ireland Two thirds of farmland in Ireland is family owned and run for typically over a century. Out of that twelve percent of which are owned by women. Typically men hold more of the productive roles involving the operation and maintenance of the farm while the women hold reproductive roles and tend to the household. Historically this has given most of the power to the male. In Katie Barclay's "Place and Power in Irish Farms at the End of the Nineteenth Century" most of the leverage for decision making would be the use of the houses spaces such as the kitchen as a tool to negotiate for power within the farm. However, in recent years, women are viewed as a legal business holder giving them increasing recognition on the farm enabling them to have input on crucial decisions.
In the article by Roisin Kelly and Sally Shortall (December 2002), it discusses how due to decreasing income from farming in northern Ireland the women typically get a job outside of the farm to support the farm. This financial move is oftentimes in order to preserve the farm during rough financial times.
Latin America Mexico