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Gender, Power and Property: “In my own right”
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2013-11
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A. Byrne, N. Duvvury, Á. Macken-Walsh, T. Watson. (2013) Gender, Power and Property: “In my own right”. REDP Working Paper Series
Abstract
Women on farms in Ireland are a subject of feminist analysis for five
decades. Salient themes are the constraints of patriarchal agriculture
(O'Hara 1997; Shortall, 2004), the invisibility of women's farm work
(Viney 1968; O’Hara 1998), gender inequalities in ownership of farm
assets (Watson et al. 2009) and increasing professionalisation of
farmwomen outside of agriculture (Kelly and Shortall 2002; Hanrahan
2007). Most women enter farming through marriage and family ties.
Land ownership is identified by Shortall (2004) as the critical factor
underpinning male domination of the occupational category ‘farmer’
and considerable power differentials between men and women in
family farming. This is an area that requires further investigation. Our
analysis, framed by theoretical models of feminisation and
empowerment, explores cases where male farm property ownership
in Ireland is disrupted in conventional and non-conventional
agricultural settings. Do these cases provide evidence of new
opportunities for women to become farm property owners, and in
what contexts? What consequences do these opportunities have for
farmwomen’s empowerment and agency? How does women’s farm
property ownership disturb rural gender relations in the context of
the family farm?