Elsevier

Journal of Rural Studies

Volume 24, Issue 4, October 2008, Pages 432-439
Journal of Rural Studies

Agricultural education: Gender identity and knowledge exchange

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrurstud.2008.03.007Get rights and content

Abstract

Women farmers are underserved in agricultural education and technical assistance. Long held social constructions of farming women as ‘farmwives’ and in some cases ‘the bookkeepers’ rather than farmers or decision-makers influence the direction of most educational programming delivered through extension programs in land-grant universities in the United States. Consequently, many women farmers generally view these spaces as hostile, rather than helpful environments. This paper uses the agricultural training framework developed by Liepins and Schick (1998) to analyze our research on developing educational programming for women farmers. We conducted five focus groups with members of the Pennsylvania Women's Agricultural Network (PA-WAgN) to better understand women farmers’ needs for education. Women farmers reported the kinds of knowledge and information they want, in what kinds of contexts, and through what means of communication. We adapt and extend the original theoretical framework developed by Liepins and Schick to incorporate the seriality of women's identities, their discourses of embodiment and the agency granted to them through social networks. Through a presentation of the results of these focus groups, we discuss both the relevance of gender to agricultural education and the importance of the network model in providing education to women farmers.

Introduction

Despite widespread economic restructuring, a great deal of agriculture in the United States continues to adhere to the agrarian ideal of family farming. A gendered division of labor within the family unit undergirds this agrarian ideal (Whatmore, 1991, Little and Panelli, 2003) and contributes to the marginalization of women from knowledge exchange and decision-making roles regarding crop and animal production (Leckie, 1996). Thus, many women identify themselves, and others commonly associate them with, support roles on the farm (Whatmore, 1991, Sachs, 1996, Pini, 2002). Women who identify themselves as farmers, and thus claim spaces of authority and knowledge, often transgress the expected roles of women in rural communities (Trauger, 2004). The expectation of the roles of women translates into the spaces of agricultural education which are often male-dominated and premised on an ‘expert’ model of knowledge (Kloppenburg, 1991). Consequently, agricultural education in the United States rarely includes women as sources of knowledge or takes women's knowledge seriously (Shortall, 1996).

This paper uses the framework developed by Liepins and Schick (1998) for evaluating agricultural training programs to analyze our research on developing an agricultural training system that will meet the needs of women farmers. We utilize the theoretical concepts of Leipins and Schick (1998) as a guide for understanding the educational needs expressed by women farmers. We use their conceptual tools of seriality, discourse and agency to explain the research findings, and to address women farmers’ educational needs. In the section following the theoretical framework, we discuss the methods and methodology of the research. We describe PA-WAgN in terms of its context, operations, participants and outcomes, and explain how we use participatory action research as a framework to guide our research and outreach activities. But first, we discuss the history of agricultural education in the United States and lay out our theoretical framework.

Section snippets

Agricultural extension in the United States

The history of agricultural education in the United States is closely tied to the development of agricultural science in the land-grant university system. Until the early twentieth century, farmers developed and shared knowledge about agriculture among themselves. After the Morrill (1862) and Smith-Lever Acts (1914), however, the production and distribution of agricultural information came under the purview of land-grant universities in each state and their associated Cooperative Extension

Identity, embodiment and trust in farmer education

Liepins and Schick (1998) suggest using three concepts through which to view and to evaluate gender and agricultural training systems: seriality, discourse, and agency. We suggest that other conceptual frames extend the theoretical approach of Liepins and Schick (1998) for understanding women farmers’ agricultural training needs. First, the concept of intersectionality highlights the heterogeneous and multiple positions and identities of women and builds on Liepins and Schick's concept of

Rationale for participatory action research

The research in this paper follows a feminist, participatory and qualitative tradition. Early work on feminist methodology focused on “the distinctive experience of women—that is, seeing women rather than just men in center stage, as both subject matter and creators of knowledge” (Nielsen, 1990: 19). In addition to seeing women as creators of knowledge, and agents in their own transformative politics, Rose (1993) argues that feminist scholarship and research should be “committed to changing

Data collection

We conducted five focus groups in five different extension regions of Pennsylvania. Each focus group participant completed a participant profile describing their identities as farmers, the type of farm operation, and other characteristics of their farm. We transcribed the focus group interviews and two of the authors coded the transcripts separately using codes for values, motivations, educational content, positive and negative experiences with educational contexts, organizations, sources of

Results and discussion

In what follows we illustrate how identity (both serial and intersectional), discourses of embodiment, and agency (through social networking) combine to provide a framework for the content, context and delivery format of agricultural education that women farmers prefer. We present several conversations from the interviews in two acts in which all three aspects of these preferences regarding agricultural education surfaced.

Conclusion

Women's agricultural education needs are often not adequately met by current agricultural extension efforts in the United States. This paper extends the theoretical framework of Liepins and Schick (1998) to explain how agricultural training organizations perpetuate uneven access to agricultural education for men and women. We extend their original framework by integrating intersectionality with seriality, discourses with embodiment, and agency with social networks. We use these concepts to

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