Rural feminism, err, what's that?

[LiveFastDieOld2]

I don't think I have ever heard the word feminism spoken in my rural backwater. We seem to be stuck in the Middle Ages with little potential for change. Virtually all the money and assets (very much not the same thing BTW in farming) are controlled by men with zero interest in giving up male control.

I am the only girl in my immediate friendship group who will inherit the family farm! All around me its going to be an older brother or a younger brother who will gain control of the farm. All my friends will get will be a few, sometimes a very few, tens of thousands of pounds in cash while the sons will inherit hundreds of thousands or even millions of pounds of assets.

How much publicity does this injustice receive? Almost none!

Another problem is the extreme isolation of many girls in rural areas. If I'm working on Home Farm the only ladies I will see in a day will be my Mother, my younger sister and the two grooms. Once a month when I'm off seeing the tenant farmers it is slightly better because it is the Farmers' Wives that usually do the paperwork. The sons usually go the Fathers to market once a week, the daughters seldom if ever go.

How can the feminist movement move forward against this background.

Quite.

The thing that bugged me was every time he told that little anecdote, his wife would grin as if it was the funniest thing ever. I found it really difficult TBH.

An not Iran - sorry about my spelling and short
Answers - it's difficult on my phone.

True buffy. I wonder what the statistics of how many female farmers there are read like. I know if I go to cereals for example I stick out like a sore thumb.

Yeah, I'd like to know the stats too. There are a few farmers on MN, I think.

I'd be really interested to know how many single women are farmers, as opposed to being half of a couple who farm, because farming still seems to be such a family industry.

I wonder if technological changes are/will make a difference? Most of my extended family are/were farmers and I work with them. There's been huge changes in the amount of paperwork needed for farming in the last decade alone, whereas in 2001 paperwork related to FMD had to include 'I have read this form or had it read to me' as so many farmers in certain very traditional areas were almost illiterate. Now having someone educated who handles much of the paperwork is a necessity.

Also I dont know how much physical strength is needed for most farmers now, but I know London bus drivers are now 10% female since power steering became standard - it might make a difference in arable at least?

In the farming family I know well, there was never any question that the farm wouldn't go to the son - which I believe is sexist. The daughters have never been intrested in working the farm, which is one of the reasons given for the farm going to their brother, but then again, they had no incentive to get involved as they knew they'd never get the farm.

But what has happened is that the women have all had significant amounts of cash, and I believe will be directors of the business. So while the set up is still sexist IMO, the parents have taken steps to make things more equable.

This is really interesting. I live and grew up in a rural area and I don't recognise what you are all describing.

Perhaps because round here it is small crofts?

I know quite a few single women who are farmers (young and old) and women's input into the everyday farmlife isn't seen as less important/useful ime. The opposite in fact, in several cases it's the women who have the real knowledge and skill with plants or animals or certain jobs and this is acknowledged in the family. Maybe I just know a lot of cool people?!

I teach in a rural community and a large proportion of my pupils come from farming families. Most of the girls are thinking about what they want to do when they leave school as they know they will be going out to work and then "helping out" on a farm in their spare time. Pretty much all of the boys from farming families know they are going to inherit the farm and all they ever talk about is their farm.

I even have a colleague who openly stated that her aim in life is to meet and marry a farmer so she can be a farmer's wife. She's a teacher, and a bloody good one, but she wants to give it up so she can marry a farmer, do all the cooking, cleaning, childcare, accounts, etc as well as do her share of the milking and manual work on the farm. I think it's crazy, especially since she has always done just as much on the family farm as her younger brother but there's never been any mention of her inheriting as the eldest, no, it's all about him because he's the boy (out of 5 children, the 4 girls have all been encouraged to find their own farmer ) and he left school at 16 to work on the farm. None of the girls were allowed the choice about going to work on the farm, they were all expected to continue studying and make a living outside of farming until the can marry a farmer.

A wide range of views and experiences but to me clear signs of a problem where progress, if any, is mega slow!

There is going to be a new rep calling today. I'm almost certain that he will register not very well hidden disappointment at both my age and my gender!

It always makes me chuckle when reps am for my dad and get faced with smiley me instead!

she wants to give it up so she can marry a farmer, do all the cooking, cleaning, childcare, accounts, etc as well as do her share of the milking and manual work on the farm

I don't understand this. I remember watching an episode of 'Wife Swap' where one of the families was a farming family and was rather horrified by the amount of work the husband had to do each day.

Is there some kind of status to being a 'farmer's wife' in a rural area?

I don't live in UK but live rural and here (SW France) there are certainly old fashioned sexists at large . Roles are split along traditional lines though even here I know of a woman rep, sole woman farmer, woman part of a couple who milk, and my good friend who stuffs ducks. What I find interesting is it's almost exclusively the farm machinery which gets manified. My friend is a great tractor driver and in extremis she will plough etc but ordinarily she won't - and even this year, when they were late sowing, three tractors hang around the yard because her husband wouldn't let her use one. Crazy. But in all the other tasks I can think of, including lumping hay and wood (though not cutting) and other pretty physical work, wives and husbands participate. It's just the wife then has to make coffee, the 3 course lunch on top every day which makes me angry to see. Then they moan at the dearth of young girls locally .

Young farmers are almost exclusively male and something I've noticed which makes me mad, is all the farm equipment is made for men. So gates are heavy and high up and bloody difficult as hell to open, buckets very wide...On the upside, inheritance is much better as, in Italy, property and land has to be split equally.

"What I find interesting is it's almost exclusively the farm machinery which gets manified. "

I'd say there are two reasons for that over and above direct sexism (ie husband 'won't let' wife do it). The first is upbringing & experience - if you haven't grown up using machinery or in some other way gained that experience outside of work time then it is (a) daunting putting implements on, adjusting them correctly etc and (b) you will be slower and when there is time pressure then it won't make sense for you to do that job.

The second reason can be physical strength. I am pretty bloody fit (well not atm as have back injury, but usually), I work outdoors most of the time, and will happily shift muck, chop wood etc. BUT I am only 5', weigh 7 stone, and I really do struggle with shifting implements to get them in the right position, getting bolts undone etc. Its not like barrowing stuff where I can split things into smaller loads & just do more trips.

All that means that although in theory we split our work equally, in practice DH does 80% of machinery work, fencing, 'traditional' farm work while I do 80% of propagation, transplanting etc. Having said that I don't worry too much about it because if push came to shove & DH was out of action it would be easier to hire someone to do basic tractor work than to do skilled horticulture tasks.

My Father almost always make a point of coming in when a rep is with me to ask some variation on, "What would you like me to do next?" It amuses us every time!
Neither of us has any problem with allocating jobs between us or to other staff based on knowledge, skills, experience, physical strength or even aptitude: just not on gender alone.
Mum would be proud of us!

My experiences with the "rural mafia" haven't been much fun.

The OP is right about cash v assets though. I got married to a farmer's son when I was 18 and he was given 1/3rd of his family farm as wedding "present". He then died (Sudden Adult Death Syndrome) and the 1/3rd was left to me. I wanted (needed) 1/3 of the assets but his folk offered me 1/3 of the farm income. This figure was complete fiction and was thanks to a tame accountant. It took ages for them to realise that a 1/3 share was 1/3 of the assets which was a totally different situation. Lots of nastiness followed.

Interesting thread. Probably a slightly different scenario round here as the farmers are almost all tenants to a few large landowners. As such, there is less debate about inheritance, and often the job (usually held by the woman) outside the farm is the only thing keeping them afloat and therefore takes priority - so, for example, a lots of the farming fathers are the ones doing the school run because their wives have more rigid working hours. The full time farmers' wives (doing the paperwork, running the business, raising the family) seem to be mostly the older generation. Of course that doesn't seem to stop the (one of many, we are strange incomers and neither of us works in farming) at the fact that I not only work full time but also travel quite a lot for work - women might be the majority income earners, but they are still expected to be home for their DC every night .

The first offer I was made when my husband died (1/3 of the profit from the farm) was under £10,000 per year. The offer I accepted (1/3 of the assets) was the farmhouse plus the 8 acres around it. I don't think my MIL and FIL realised the problems this was to cause!!

Their legal advice was just chats with their friends at market plus lots of "it only seems fair that ....". Mine was with an expensive expert and my side won.

This has a wider impact on non farming families who live in rural places. And more than just gender issues, but conformity generally. farming communities can be so conservative, and ostracise people who are 'other' .

Just wanting to say that the difficulties for women are in a wider context. Geographical isolation will compound lack of tolerance.

Glad that you won in the end. In what other situation would a widow (from a family where there is substantial land/business) be expected to walk away with just a few grand a year?

Out of interest, do you still live/farm there?

I do live there but don't farm. My MIL and FIL have never been friendly to me. Not nasty but as if I didn?t count. I always felt that I was on trial and they were just waiting for me to fall. When I was widowed they seemed to assume that the Will leaving me Mike?s share of the farm could just be ignored and that I would either move away and out of their lives or I would agree to living in a 1 room bed-sit in the farmhouse with them ?generously? paying me about £200 per week. They also wanted all sorts of rules about parking spaces and when I could cook and things like that. It was like I was going to be a lodger and not a 1/3 partner!
Luckily my foster parents helped me pay for decent legal advice which is how I got a much fairer share of things. I own the house but MIL and FIL expect to live here rent free and that argument hasn't been sorted yet. They also expect free use of the barns and stores and that also isn't sorted.

This has been one of the most interesting threads I have read in MN: one of the most educational.

It's amazing to see how rigidly land is passed through paternal lines as opposed to maternal lines as in other countries/communities.