Women Working off the Farm:

Reconstructing Gender Identity

in Danish Agriculture

Helene Oldrup

I    D farm women’s organizations hosted a conference under

the theme ‘Who is the farm woman today?’ and the aim was to debate ‘farm

women’s role in modern Danish agriculture.’ The question is reflecting the
ambiguous role women play in Danish farming today. Agriculture in Denmark
was traditionally based on family farming as a social form with specific social,
economic and cultural characteristics (Højrup ). Women played an im-
portant role in family farming and had a strong identity (Zenius ; Land-
brugsrådet ). Women’s identity was associated with their work in the di-
vision of labour on the farm (Rømer and Nielsen ). However, the restruc-
turing process in agriculture during the last  years has meant great changes in
women’s role in farming. The modernization processes taking place in agri-
culture has reduced the need for labour on the farm and increased the impor-
tance of capital. This is reflected in women’s connection to farming, since the
number of farm women working outside the farm have more than doubled
between  and  (Jensen ). The modernization processes in Danish
society in general has meant that most women are now in the labour market,
employment being an important part of female identity (Simonsen ). This
is also reflected amongst women on farms, since most are connected to the la-
bour market today: farm women under fifty have an employment frequency as
high as Danish women in general;  per cent are connected to the labour
market. There has therefore been a generation change in Danish agriculture:
most women who marry a farmer today have their own education and con-
tinue to work outside farming after marriage, and many have a non-agricultural
background (Jensen ). These changes in women’s connection to farming
suggest that farm women’s identity is undergoing reconstruction.

Helene Oldrup: Institute of Political Analysis, University of Southern Denmark, Esbjerg,

Denmark
Published by Blackwell Publishers, ©European Society for Rural Sociology
 Cowley Road, Oxford  ,  Sociologia Ruralis . ,  , 
 Main Street, Malden,  ,   -
 O

There are, however, very few signs of what this new identity might entail,
and what is replacing the traditional farm woman’s identity. Rather, the dis-
course on farm women identity continues to focus on women’s role in the
traditional division of labour on the farm, and this discourse is dominant: the
farm women organizations continue to focus on women’s interests as related
to their work in the household through meetings, extension activities etc., and
they have not been complemented or replaced by other organizations (Thing-
strup ). Agricultural magazines continue to dedicate a section to women’s
issues, and here they focus on women’s role in the complementary division of
labour on the farm (Oldrup ). In society at large there is a resurge of in-
terest in the culture of the traditional family farm as evidenced by the publicity
surrounding the television series based on the novels of Morten Korch. These
novels portray the ‘golden days’ of Danish family farming. They implicitly have
an understanding of gender relations as complementary and harmonic.
These are examples of the discourse on farm women that circulate both inside
and outside agriculture. They show that the discourse continues to be closely
associated to the women’s work in the gendered division of labour on the
family farm and that a specific understanding of ‘farm woman identity,’ as dif-
ferent from a modern and urban female identity, continues to be reproduced
discursively. This means that the radical changes in women’s connection to
farming is not reflected in the dominant discourse on farm women’s identity,
and there is very little evidence of other discourses of farm women’s identity
emerging in the public domain.
The changes in women’s connection to farming are also not reflected in the
feminist literature on farm women, which focuses on women working on the
farm as housewives and/or farm workers. There are few studies about farm
women working outside the farm (Little , ; O’Hara ), although
the trend towards more women working outside the farm is visible in many

places. We can expect that this group of women will grow in the years to come,
and it is important to begin to understand how they are (re)constructing farm
women’s identity, and in turn, rurality. In this article I therefore want to inves-
tigate the identity of this group of women who live on farms, but who are
working in the labour market outside agriculture, and who only occasionally
help with the work on the farm. The aim of the article is both theoretical and
empirical: How can their identity be understood? And what characterizes it? I
recognize that this is not the only relevant ‘farm women identity’ to explore, as
there are different ways of being connected to farming as a womani.e. as a
housewife, as a professional farmer, as a waged worker etc.and therefore many
‘farm women’s identities.’ However, this group is now dominant in Danish ag-
riculture, while their identity and contribution remain largely unexplored.

Theoretical perspectives

There has been considerable research on farm women in western industrialized

societies during the last two decades, which document change and diversity of
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their work and life situation (for example, Brandth and Verstad ; Whatmore

et al. ; van der Plas and Fonte ; Journal of Rural Studies ). This lit-
erature is very rich and varied, covering many aspects of, and many perspectives
on, farm women’s life. Here my main interest is identity, and it is from this
perspective I will discuss the literature. To explore farm women’s identity raises
the question of how we are to conceive their identity. There is no uniform
understanding of how we understand the concept of identity, rather there are
many, and sometimes conflicting, views in feminist literature on farm women,
which in turn reflects the debates in feminist theory at large.
A dominant perspective in sociological literature on farm women is the criti-
cal-materialistic perspective (examples are Berlan Darque ; Garcia Ramon
et al. ; Leckie ; Ravn and Bak ; Sachs ). Central to this per-
spective is that it is the underlying gender division of work which is central to
understand the gendered identity (Kaul ; Delphy and Leonard ). One
important contributor is Whatmore who has made a link between women’s
position in farming and the Marxist political economy of family farming (What-
more a,b). The strength of her argument is that she links patriarchal gender
relations to the commodization process in agriculture, i.e., the wider economic
structures of agriculture. In this understanding, the patriarchal relations work at
the micro level on the family farm through the labour process, ownership,
marriage and kinship ties, economic dependence and the ideologies of marriage.
In her empirical analysis, Whatmore focuses on the labour process on the farm
as central to understanding women’s position. This means that women emerge
from her analysis as having relatively little room for manoeuvre and there is also
little evidence of women taking any action to resist the twin structures of patri-
archy and commoditization. The farm women of her study are therefore rep-
resented as passive and subordinated by these structures (O’Hara ).
In recent years feminist researchers on farm women have introduced post-
structuralist perspectives which understand farm women’s identity as constructed
through cultural discourses, and the focus is mainly on rural media representa-
tions of gender (examples are Brandth and Haugen ; Liepins ). Central
to this perspective is that in the reading of texts and discourses, the media can be
seen as an important place to study meaning and power (Liepins ). In this
understanding, the rural press represents specific textual ways of giving meaning
to the world of agriculture, and of organizing institutions and processes (Wee-
don ). Studying the media is therefore one way of exploring how knowl-
edge and social relations are constructed and reconstructed in relation to gender.
Important findings of these studies are that hegemonic discourses of masculinity
in agriculture are constructed in media and reports, in parallel with marginal-
ized, domesticated and subservient discourses of femininity (Liepins ).
These two theoretical perspectives are important examples of how the con-
struction of farm woman identity is understood in feminist literature. Within
this literature it is difficult to view the farm woman as an agent who gives shape
to her life, although in circumstances which are not of her own making (Fonte
et al. ; but see Haugen ). Whether oppressed by patriarchal ideologies
 O

or inscribed by the discourses of femininity in agriculture, farm women succumb

to a hegemonic system and are not seen as agents (Davies ). I share the
critical assessments of practices and discourses which subordinates and pacify
women within agriculture, but I believe they are only part of the story. What
is missing is a perspective which focuses on how women themselves understand
and experience their situation. I therefore wish to open up the discussion of
farm women’s identity, to be able to work with a more varied and subtle un-
derstanding of their identity, as well as developing a perspective which looks at
women as active and knowledgeable actors giving shape to their livesalbeit
in a constraining context.
Furthermore, the focus on institutions, practices and discourses within agri-
culture in feminist literature on farm women raises questions about the analyti-
cal division between rural and urban society. This division is both normative
and theoretical. It can be found in people’s taken-for-granted understanding of
differences between the rural and the urban (Halfacree ; Little ). More
importantly, it can be found in sociological theory, where there is a long tra-
dition of dividing between urban and rural places and people (Falk ). Ex-
amples of this are the concepts of gemeinschaft/gesellschaft, folk/urban, tradi-
tional/modern (Sachs ), although these concepts did not originally refer to
a spatial division. In this division the rural is associated with the static and tra-

ditional while the urban is associated with the modern. Hence the ‘traditional’
farm woman and the ‘modern’ urban woman. However, following Murdoch
and Pratt (, ), I will caution against the use of universal concepts of
‘rural’ and ‘urban.’ Instead, the ‘rural’ can be seen as practised by individuals
and collectives in the production of new forms of social relations. ‘Rurality’ is
therefore not a stable socio-spatial reference point: “‘the rural’ may be practised
in the ‘urban,’ or in any other place: it does not essentially lie anywhere, it is
locally produced” (Murdoch and Pratt , p. ). It is therefore important
to recognize that farm women’s identity, and hence the identity of women
working off the farm, is created through the many, varied and changing dis-
courses, practices and relations, which they take part in, inside and outside of
agriculture. I therefore suggest a theoretical perspective on farm women’s iden-
tity inspired by theories of modernity, everyday life and identity.
Farm women’s identity can be understood in the context of late modernity
characterized by the twin processes of modernization: institutionalization and
individualization (Giddens ). Institutionalization means that a growing part
of our social activities and relations are being mediated by systems like institu-
tions of the welfare state, science and technology, mass media and the world
market. For example, farm women use the roads to drive to work, the tele-
phone system and the kindergarten for their children. Individualization means
that the individual increasingly is being set free from traditional bindings like
class, gender, local community and religion. This is also evidenced in the life
of the farm women: many of them do not come from the local area or have a
farming background. Hence, rural areas and agriculture cannot be seen as out-
side the processes of modernization, but are also being changed by them. One
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important consequence of this is that the conditions for identity are radically
changed. In traditional cultures few changes occurred from one generation to
the next, but in late modernity, identity is to a much larger degree something
the individual constructs according to social and psychic information (Giddens
). Questions about who we are and how we should live are therefore an-
swered in everyday life and interpreted in relation to the unfolding of identity.
An important characteristic of modern society is that many roles, activities
and fora are separated as a result of modernization processes. It is the individual
who integrates the different roles associated with the spheres that she partici-
pates in into one main identity consisting of many aspects and different identi-
ties (Gullestad ). Identity can be seen as the result of the interaction be-
tween her earlier social identities and her present identities. A person will use
experiences and capacities from earlier periods of her life, as well as being lim-
ited by cultural competence and present situation. For the purpose of this arti-
cle, I therefore want to understand identity as a continual process to bring to-
gether the many experiences of the individual. Identity is not a finished prod-
uct, but a continual and changing process (Gullestad ). Using this perspec-
tive emphasizes that farm women creatively and knowledgeably interact with
the contexts that they are situated in.
This perspective is useful in the understanding of farm women’s identity.
During their everyday life they participate in many different activities and con-
texts where they have different roles, and also many are brought up outside
agriculture. This means that they bring different backgrounds and experiences
of family life and gender into the everyday life on the farm. The question is how
they interpret and process these many aspects of their everyday life into one
whole identity. While the aim is to present identity as complete and holistic, it
is recognized that representations of identity might be fragmented and divided.
Having sketched out the theoretical perspectives, I will now turn to the em-
pirical discussion about farm women’s identity.

Everyday life stories

The purpose of my inquiry has been to obtain knowledge about farm women’s

identity. This raises a number of methodological questions, but here I will try
to account for the most important research strategies I have used. Qualitative
interviews were chosen as the best research tool to obtain knowledge about
farm women’s identity (Kvale ). Elements from the life history interview
where also used, as women’s earlier experiences where included (Linde ).
Interviews with nine women during Spring  forms the background for
the empirical analysis. Their ages were between  and  years. They were all
connected to the labour market and were not born on a farm. They had dif-
ferent educational backgrounds and where working in different sectors of the
labour market, although generally not in high paid jobs. They lived on different
types and sizes of farms, and this meant that their income played a different role
for the family and farm. Most of the women had small children, but a few had
 O

teenage children and one woman did not have any children. All the women
helped out on the farm, but only to a limited extent, i.e. in connection with
seasonal related needs for extra labour. Importantly, most had moved to the
farm within the last few years to set up a family. Common for all the women
were that they participated in ‘study groups’ for farm women working outside
the farm, and it was through these groups that contact was made to them. This
choice of women has important consequences for the representation of farm
women in the study. Since focus is on the women’s early stage on the farm, it
means that they are in a phase where they are still working out identity and
values in their life on the farm.
All the women where interviewed in their own home. In the interviews
focus was on their activities and experience in everyday life. The women told
me stories about their ambivalent and contradictory experiences related to their
everyday life. While the themes in the stories were similar, the focus and inten-
sity varied, as well as the strategies and interpretations that the women where
making. Any representation of the women’s identity is a selection from the
many stories they told me. In this representation I have chosen to focus on the
women’s construction of identity in relation to farm and home and not in re-
lation to their employment. It is the women’s life at home which gives them
different conditions compared to ‘non-farm’ women. I chose four themes
through which to represent the women’s identity: construction of identity in
relation to their ‘home,’ negotiations in the gendered division of labour on the
farm, negotiations concerning work and leisure, and participation in the study
groups. This choice reflects some dominant themes in all the women’s stories
of their everyday life. I only indirectly discuss women’s relations to decision
making concerning farm and investments. While this is an important topic in
the literature about farm women and also for this group of women, it is symp-
tomatic that most of the women did not have very much to say about these
issues: they saw the farm and decision making regarding the farm not as their
concern. In this way they reconstruct the farm, not as a family farm, but as
their husband’s work. However, as we shall see, it is difficult for the women to
draw a line between family life on one side and on the other the farm as their
husband’s work.

Getting a ‘home’

When the women move to the farm, they first of all have to make it a ‘home.’
‘The home’ can be seen as central in our everyday life. Spatially the home is
where we spend a large part of our lives. In terms of time the home is a fixed
pointit is from the home we go out to the world, and it is where we return
from the world. ‘The home’ can therefore be seen as important in the con-
struction of identity and integration of the many roles the individual has dur-
ing everyday life (Gullestad a). During the interviews, it appeared that the
women’s relationship to their home on the farm was not simple and was of
importance for their construction of identity. This is related to the common
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practice of ‘the family farm.’ This practice means that the farmer takes over his
parents’ farm and that farm and home is a unit in legal and economic terms.
This practice is related to custom, but also to the fact that the farm is a business,
which means that it may not be strategic to share ownership.
Most of the women interviewed have moved to the family farm of their
husband, either in conjunction with taking over the farm or after deciding to
move in together. They experience this as having no choice in the matter as to
where the couple are living and what their ‘home’ is like. And they regret this.
One woman says about her husband’s taking over of the family farm after his
uncle suddenly died: “I was angry the first yearnot because I didn’t like the
farm, because I do, but I didn’t feel I had been involved in the decision. It
wasn’t something we’d chosen together.” Other women say that they had
some serious considerations before they decided to move to the farm, which
were often in a different region than where they were from. It is a recurring
theme in the women’s stories that they regret not having been involved in
choosing where the couple lives. However, they do not mention bringing it
up as discussion with their husbandperhaps because their husband’s identity
is so closely connected to taking over his parent’s farm, that it is difficult to
raise as an issue that they could buy a different farm. For the women this means
that when they move to the farm they therefore experience ambivalent feelings
about the joint home because they have it as an expectation, that they should
be involved in the choice of ‘home.’
The women also later experience ambivalence with regard to ‘the home.’
One woman explains that because the farm house is a family farm and owned
by her husband she feels that her husband has a larger say in relation to, for ex-
ample, the renovation of their house. She does not feel that the home fully is a
joint project between them and she compares it to a previous relationship: “I
used to live with another man, where you both were equal about everything.”
While she accepts that the house is in her husband’s name, she does not expe-
rience the same degree of being communal in relation to the house she feels
she could have done. For the time being she accepts the way things are, but
also says that she expects that in the future, when they have another child,
feelings of having a joint project will develop.
For the women on family farms ambivalence towards their home and a feel-
ing of lack of involvement in the choice of home can be seen on the back-
ground of values and practices in Danish society generally, where it is the norm
that a couple rent or move their joint home together. When the women resent
their lack of choice with regard to ‘home,’ it is because the home functions as
an important representation of the couple’s relationship. The absence of choice
means that the women cannot represent their entry into the joint home as be-
ing on an equal footing with their husband. When they draw on their expec-
tations and previous experiences with regard to homemaking, it is difficult for
them to construct identity as equal partners in the relationship.
This interpretation of the women’s feelings of ambivalence is underlined by
the women who live on farms which were bought on the market, and who
 O

have joint ownership of the farm. These women do not tell of ambivalent feel-
ings in connection with moving into the farm. Instead, they tell stories of the
criteria they used for making the decision about buying the farm they live on.
Also, they do not tell stories of difficulties with constructing identity as partners
with regard to their home. One woman’s story illustrates this. She explains that
at first she did not want to sign on the loan for their farm since it was her hus-
band’s work. However, the bank demanded this and she decided to do so: “In
the beginning I didn’t want to, but then again, it is ours, we started it and it is
also part of me.” For her to be the joint owner of the farm and farmhouse makes
it possible for her to construct her identity in relation to the ‘home,’ and hence
represent the relationship, as being equal and a joint project. It makes it possi-
ble for her to construct her identity in relation to the home as well as the farm,
which she sees as a unit. This means that she also sees the farm as being an im-
portant part of the family’s everyday life.

Making compromises in the gendered division of labour

Despite all the differences between the interviewed women, a common feature
between them was that they were all responsible for the largest part of house-
hold work. This is typical of farm women, as the general tendency towards joint
responsibility of housework in society at large has only slightly affected family
life on farms (Jensen ; Hjorth Andersen ). How do the women expe-
rience this work, and how do they construct identity in relation to this work?
Almost none of the women tell stories of pleasure in relation to housework.
It is work which is necessary to get done. Cooking was a specific theme in the
interviews, and almost all the women express a dislike for the daily responsibil-
ity for cooking. One women says: “No I hate it, I don’t like cooking. But I try
to make it a manageable thing, I try to plan it. But I much prefer to be outside.”
By expressing a dislike for cooking, the women distance themselves from the
traditional women’s role in farming. It is not an identity with which they asso-
ciate positively, and they rather construct their identity in opposition to a house-
wife identity. One important exception is a woman who is a doctor: she tells
stories of how she always likes cooking and cookbooks, how she plans the
family’s food and how they are going to design their new kitchen. For her food
and cooking is an element in her construction of identity. Perhaps she has no
need to distance herself from the traditional women’s role because she has at-
tained a high status education and work. While most of the women do not use
housework in their construction of identity, they tell many stories of their
children and the activities they do with them. Most women gain pleasure and
a positive identity from being with their children.
Whilst the women do do the housework, they do not regard it as solely
‘women’s work; they see it as work which is also a joint responsibility. Most
of the women expect, or used to expect, that their husband take part in house-
hold work. The women’s expectations can be seen as a result of the societal
changes during the last  years. There has been a change of norms and gender
 W     

roles, which means that work in the household is no longer regarded solely as
women’s responsibility in public discourse. When the women explain why they
do most of the housework despite their expectations of more shared work, they
have different reasons. They say that it is because they have too high standards
for the quality of the housework, and that they therefore have to do it them-
selves; that it is a way of being supportive of their husband and that when they
can see that their men are busy, it seems fair that they do this work. The women
therefore stress that it is their own choice to do this work. In a sense, they
therefore take responsibility for the fact men do not participate in household
work, and therefore for the lack of equality (Kaul ).
However, when the women take responsibility for the household work, it
can also be seen in the context of the farm household where both farm work
and household work are included in the negotiations about the division of la-
bour. When they negotiate the sharing of household work, then agricultural
work is included, directly or indirectly. Most of the women help with farm
work in the periods when it is necessary and there is a need for extra labour
for example during harvest, with stone collection on the fields, etc. The
women stress that this is not work that interests them very much, and that
they do not have time for this. They therefore only do work on the farm when
it is absolutely necessary. However, they also say that they see their full respon-
sibility for housework as a way of helping their husband. Two of the women
have more direct discussion in their relationship concerning whether they
should help more with the work on the farm. These women are open for this
because they want the farm to be a shared project. One woman says: “I think
there would be something missing if we did not share what we both live on,
so I try to find out about fertilizer and so on, but I don’t do it myself.” And
the other: “It is a part-time farm, we both have full-time jobs, so we use our
leisure time on it. We both should be inside and outside I thought.” These
women are trying to redefine the farm as a joint project. Characteristic for them
is that they both live on a part-time farm, and also that they have extra ‘re-
sources’ during everyday life: one woman has no children and the other has a
high income. Perhaps this gives them better possibilities for relating to the farm.
Although they are attempting to redefine the farm as a joint project, they end
up with limitations: “We are doing what is most practical, I do the housework
and he is outside. I cannot do the work outside, I would have to learn itwhat
the pigs eat and why. But then I thinkreally there is no need, as it is him who
wants the animals.” And: “We have talked about sharing the work between us,
but then he said I should do more outside. I can just see it, if I go outside then
it will end up in a mess inside. So I don’t feel ready yet.”
In the negotiations on division of labour between household and farm, the
women therefore choose to do the household work: they can see that they will
see even less of their husband should they demand full ‘equality’ in the house-
hold. Some women accept this compromise, see it as necessary, while others
experience satisfaction from being in a ‘complementary’ relationship, i.e., where
the two spouses have different roles to support each other. However, there is a
 O

risk for some women as there is a gap between their expectations about sharing
work in the household and the actual lack of this. Some women cannot recon-
cile this gap, which means that their self-understanding is put under pressure. As
one woman says: “I imagined a man who worked from eight till four, or per-
haps a bit more. I thought he would be around in the evenings and give a hand
with the household work. I soon learned that I could not expect that. That was
the most difficult thing to learn to live with.” For this woman it has been dif-
ficult to reconcile her early expectations with the actual situation.

Work and leisure during everyday life

In all the women’s stories about their everyday life on the farm, worktoo
much workwas a central feature, particularly how the work on the farm in-
fluenced family life. The women’s stories varied: they placed emphasis on dif-
ferent consequences of too much work, and their experience and conception
differed. However, it is a common theme that the work causes tension, confu-
sion and pain for the women. One woman talks about the summertime, when
everyday life is particularly hectic, and where she does not see her husband
much: “And when I see him he is stressed out and annoyed. It’s because he is
busy, but I am used to being more together about things.” Another woman
says, that in the beginning, she could not understand that her husband was al-
ways out in the evening, and that she thought there was something wrong with
herself: “I would have liked to know that there were [other women] with the
same feelings and experiences as myself.” A third woman explains that she
could not understand why farm work always had first priority: “In my work I
can wait half an hour before I begin writing and I could not understand why
things just had to happen when they had to.”
These stories reflect the contradictory experiences women have on the farm
with regard to work on the farm. The women bring with them understandings
of the couple’s communal life as being organized around the household and
family, while they experience that their husband has different priorities. This
leads to misunderstandings, as when the woman above explains that she thought
there was something wrong with her. It means that it is difficult for the women
to construct identity around the activities in the family as the centre for the
couple’s activities. The women’s experiences can be interpreted as a meeting
between the farmer’s identity conceived as a masculine and work-oriented
identity, whereas the women’s identity incorporates responsibility for social
activities in the family.
The women’s experiences change over time, however. As they spend more
time on the farm, the women formulate their own wishes and aims for the
family’s lifestyle. It varies between the women what they perceive as important,
but they all talk of the necessity of doing things outside and unrelated to agri-
culture. The women’s wishes can be represented on a scale. Some talk about
the importance of an evening walk, others talk about the necessity of doing
weekend trips and holidays, while some talk about the importance of doing
 W     

things outside agriculture during everyday life, i.e., having non-farming friends,
taking part in local activities and doing sport. Most of the women therefore
come to accept that their husband’s work takes up extra time, and they also
help out on the farm, but they then expect something back, i.e., time and
flexibility in other periods. In fact some women also see the flexibility of the
farmer as an advantage for the family’s lifestyle. It means he can do the shopping
during the day, pick up the children, or look after them when they are ill, ac-
tivities which would have been difficult had he worked in a ‘normal’ job. For
most women though, it remains a continued negotiation with their husband to
achieve more time for the family.

Towards a new shared identity for ‘women working off the farm’?

In the introduction I hinted at the fact that the category of ‘farm woman’
continues to be discursively constructed as a ‘traditional’ female identity, and
that there are very few signs of competing discourses of farm women identity.
The farm women’s organizations are important producers of identity for women
on farms. While they have recently begun a restructuring and reorganization
process, they do not distance themselves from the ‘traditional’ role for women
on farms, and they have not been successful at incorporating a ‘modern’ female
identity. This is perhaps one of the reasons that these organizations find it dif-

ficult to recruit new members, and that their members average age is rising. It
is notable that none of the interviewed women identified themselves with these
organizations, nor would they consider themselves as ‘farm women.’ Some
would actively distance themselves from the category, while others simply did
not associate the term with themselves. The women lack identification with
the farm woman identity because they see is it as centred around work in the
household and as helpers on the farm, whereas paid employment is important
in the construction of their identity. However, this does not mean that we can-
not talk about a shared rural identity for this group of women.
In the last few years a new phenomenon has appeared as small women’s
groups have sprung up all over Denmark. These groups are for women on
farms, primarily women working outside the farm. The groups were initiated
by the agricultural extension service, which saw a need for distributing knowl-
edge about agricultural and economic matters to give the women more knowl-
edge. However, participants in many groups soon redefined the aim as being
more social: they needed the groups to discuss their everyday life on the farm.
The groups also invite speakers to obtain knowledge about issues of interest,
such as chemicals in agriculture, inheritance law or how to bring up children.
However, the main function of the group is social, where different themes can
be debated, i.e. taking over of the farm; children on farms, daily conflicts etc.
The emergence of the groups signals that these women have a need to meet
on the basis of living on a farm and working outside agriculture.
The women interviewed in this research all participated in these groups.
When they talk about their participation, it is stories about how they can freely
 O

and openly discuss all the problems, frustrations and conflicts they experience
at home in a setting where they can relax and where they meet mutual under-
standing. For the women, it is not possible to discuss these issues with their
friends or work colleagues whom they feel have no understanding of their
special situation. The women tell stories of the reactions they meet when they
want to discuss their home situation: they are seen as ‘suppressed’ if they accept
compromises with their husband where they have to ‘play’ a traditional role
hence the women should leave or demand changes. The groups are there-
fore a setting where the women can share their problems without being re-
garded as ‘suppressed.’ Many of the women felt isolation concerning their ex-
periences at home, but participation in the groups has broken this feeling of
isolation and has given them a feeling of togetherness.
These women’s groups can therefore be characterized as a new social move-
ment for women on farms. In the groups, the women discuss their experiences
as women on farms and what living on a farm means for family life. The women
therefore develop a shared consciousness about what themes and issues are im-
portant to debate, and, by doing this, a shared identity is developing out of their
communal circumstances. For the individual woman, participation in the groups
gives her a better understanding of her situation and also helps her formulate
understandings and individual strategies for her everyday life. Although the
groups explicitly do not define themselves as feminist, they can be compared to
the ‘consciousness raising groups’ of the feminist movement, whose purpose
were, through listening to other women’s personal stories, to develop an under-
standing of shared conditions and thereby overcoming personal marginalization.
These women’s groups can be seen as an important indication of how a new
farm woman’s identity is being constructed. Although these women’s groups
have no connection with each other, and do not represent a public formulation
of the women’s identity, the groups bring women on farms together all over
Denmark and develop a shared identity ‘from below.’ The women, through
discussion and debate in the groups, construct and reconstruct identity while
gradually finding out how they want to be women on farms. Thereby they are
also defining and redefining the meaning of gender in agriculture: they are dis-
cussing what women’s identity, and what gender relations on farms, should be
when women are living on the farms but are no longer working on them.

Women working off the farm: re-negotiating gender identity

Modernity fragments, it also unites. On the level of the individual right up to that
of planetary systems as a whole, tendencies towards dispersal vie with those pro-
moting integration. So far as the self is concerned, the problem of unification con-
cerns protecting and restructuring the narrative of self-identity in the face of the
massive intentional and extension changes which modernity sets into being. (Gid-
dens , p. )
In the beginning of this article I asked who the ‘farm woman’ is today, focusing
on the largest group of women on Danish farms: the women working off the
 W     

farm. The purpose has been to discuss how ‘farm women’ identity can be un-
derstood and what characterizes the identity of women working off the farm.
By identity I do not refer to a unified core of stable traits thought to reside in
each individual. On the contrary, I have been treating identity as a process by
which the individual constructs a sense of self. Identity therefore entails an on-
going integration of earlier experiences and competencies, as well as the pres-
ent situation. Hence, in my empirical analysis I have tried to show how the
women negotiate and process experience and conditions to construct identity.
Thus these women can be seen as an example of the self that Giddens talks
about: they are working hard towards maintaining a unified narrative of self-
identity. From the women’s stories it is clear that no single identity exists
amongst them. Their identity changes over time as they obtain more experience
and resources with which to interpret their situation. Between the women, dif-
ferences exist as to how they interpret their situation and what strategies they
chose, just as differences can be said to reside within the individual woman who
uses different stories to account for her identity. These differences depend on
her own resources (i.e., education), background and experience, as well as what
her relation to the farm is. We should therefore be careful when talking about
the ‘farm woman’ in the singular: not only do different identities of farm women
exist (working off the farm, as housewives, as professional farmers etc.), but the
category of ‘women working off the farm’ is also a fluid and flexible category,
which refers to differences between women as well as in women (Lauretis ).
This does not mean, however, that the women’s identity is relative and im-
possible to pin down, as some postmodernists might argue. They share experi-
ences, conditions and meanings on the farm which make it possible to talk of a
collective identity amongst women ‘working off the farm’ (Haavind ). In
the women’s stories of their everyday life on the farm, it is a recurring theme
that they experience a difference between their expectations and self-under-
standing and the compromises they have to make. When the women construct
identity in relation to their ‘home,’ when they negotiate identity in the division
of labour, and when they experience a lack of leisure time in the family, then
their expectations build on an understanding that the couple should be in an
equal relationship and be sharing the home, household labour and leisure time.
The women’s expectations can be seen to reflect norms and practices charac-
terizing the way identity is being constructed more generally in Danish society:
employment is a central part of both men’s and women’s identity and this in-
fluences the way we organize our whole life. It has consequences for the rela-
tionship between spouses which to a larger extent builds on equality between
the two (Giddens ). Hence it is important for the women to be able to
represent their identity through a relationship characterized by equal relations.
However, the women find it difficult to reconcile their self-understandings
and aims with the reality they meet on the farm. Living on a farm poses specific
conditions for these women’s livesthrough practises regarding ownership,
with regard to the burden of labour associated with farming, as well as the val-
ues associated with work and leisure. These practices and norms are associated
 O

with the family farm, where all activities of both spouses were directed towards
the reproduction of the farm and where the two spouses had an unequal relation
to the farm as documented in many studies. In a sense, the women who work
of the farm live in a contradictory reality. When the women’s stories are char-
acterized by ambivalence and confused feelings it can be interpreted as their at-
tempts and difficulties with reconciling different expectations and practices they
experience in different parts of their everyday life: on the farm, at work, from
friends and from their own earlier history. If the women are to reconcile this
contradictory reality and construct a ‘whole’ identity they must therefore make
compromises between these elements of their identity. Living on a farm but
working outside the farm therefore poses specific dilemmas. These are shared
by the women I interviewed, although not interpreted the same way, and it is
the experience of these that give the women a collective identity.
In the theoretical discussion I argued against representing farm women as
passive and suggested to see women as active and knowledgeable actors giving
shape to their life. This perspective does not mean that it is possible to represent
the women as ‘heroines.’ Indeed, they do not tell stories of how successful they
are at combining responsibility for their family while having a career. They do
not tell stories about how they manage working in the labour market while
being involved in farm work and decision making. Rather, in their accounts
of their everyday life on the farm they talk of the many compromises, painful
experiences and broken expectations that they experience as part of construct-
ing identity in relation to their life on the farm. However, although they are
not able to construct their identity as they wish, what is important is their aims
and continued attempts to negotiate their identity to achieve the desired lifestyle
on the farm. They do not passively accept a role/identity as ‘farm woman’ or
‘employee.’ They are actively and creatively trying to reconstruct their identity
as ‘women on farms’ between the different spheres and identities that they ex-
perience during their everyday life. This re-negotiation of identity is not just
on an individual level, but is also a social process as evidenced by participation
in the women’s groups. While there is little evidence of the consequences of
women’s changed connection to farming in the dominant discourse of the ‘farm
woman,’ the stories of the interviewed women suggests that they, through their
negotiation of identity, are re-constructing female identity on farms. By doing
so, they bring values and lifestyles normally associated with an urban identity
into the family farm. Hence, when the women are re-negotiation gender
identity and relations on the farm, they are, in turn, reconstructing rurality.

Notes

I would like to thank Kirsten Brandsholm Petersen, Helle Balsby and the editors for
helpful suggestions during the writing of this article.
. In this article I use the term ‘farm woman’ for all women living on farms, while the
term ‘women working off the farm’ refers to women living on the farm but working
outside the farm. With the term rural I refer to people living in rural areas in general.
 W     

. I have not found any comparative statistics on this matter, however, Haugen and
Blekesaune (), Whatmore (), Sachs (), and O’Hara () are examples
of authors who mention this.
. Denmark is a notable exception, as there has been very little research on farm women
in Denmark. The last research on farm women in Denmark is from the beginning of
the s, see Ravn and Bak (), Zenius (). Knudsen () is a documentary
about professional female farm workers, while Jensen () provides updated statis-
tics about women on farms.
. See Murdoch and Pratt (, ), for a critique of the way research within the
modernist paradigm has reinforced the division between rural and urban categories.
. The empirical data and analysis used in this article are derived from my Master’s thesis
on farm women’s identity in Denmark (Oldrup ) carried out at the Institute of
Environment, Technology and Social Science, University of Roskilde, Denmark.
. Based on interviews with secretaries of the two farm women’s organizations.

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