In u. S. Agriculture. And the title for the lecture today on invisible woman actually comes from a 1983 book, so ancient in your mind but a book that is over 30 years old by carolyn sex. And her book was Ground Breaking in that she was one of the first to examine the contributions of women to u. S. Agriculture and it was really this book that helped launch work by sociologists and other social scientists and rural historians to look at the contribution of women that had largely been invisible up to this time. So this is a nod to that groundbreaking book. So one of the Big Questions weve been asking in this class and posing since the first day that we meet is why should we study women in agriculture. Why not just study agriculture. Why should we take a gender and think about the different roles that men and women play. I mean why . Thats what weve been asking. That is one of the Big Questions, right. And so what weve been arguing, and what ive been arguing and other scholars argue, is that why we want to study women in agriculture and take a gender lane and not just talk about agriculture and gene role is that women have always played a really Critical Role in feeding us, in clothing us, in sustaining rural communities. Where there are farm families, increasingly helping fuel our society. And this is everywhere. Not just in the u. S. But when we just talked about agriculture, womens critical contribution was largely invisible. Or when we did see it and well talk about this in the lecture, when we did acknowledge it and we did see it, it often wasnt valued the same as mens contribution. And in some cases, it simply wasnt counted at all. Okay. In addition, the other component that weve been arguing of why should we study women in agriculture, why should we take a gender lens, is because there is an important gender gap in agriculture. Where women dont have the same access to resources that men do. They dont have the aim access to Productive Resources and capital and the same access to opportunities and leadership and education and so forth. And if we want to address this gender gap, first we have to understand what is the issue. What is the problem. If you dont know about it, you dont know how to solve it, okay. So for us to solve it, we specifically have to think about men and women and gender relations. So that is what weve been arguing in this class. So what we want to do today is we are posing two questions. And these are questions were going to be answering throughout the lecture, throughout the semester. So two questions. Why have women and their contributions been invisible, and why and how is there a gender gap with an agriculture. So these are the two Big Questions. And today were going to look at three examples to examine these questions. Were going to look at farmer identity, were going to look at farm ownership and were going to look at farm labor. And specifically today were going to take a Historical Perspective on this. So moving forward in the semester well unpack these issues as they are today but for us to understand how we got to where we are today we want to look at what do the examples look like historically. So that is our goal today. And what im going to be arguing today, based on the social science and the historical literature that has looked at women, womensin visibility, the gender gap. What im going to be arguing is that there are many Different Reasons for this. But one important reason is this idea of the egregarian ideology and what we mean is a set of beliefs that underpin our politics and economy. So this ideology is a set of beliefs and the ideology which im going to unpack in a few minutes, but fundamentally what is critically important for you to remember is that this ideology in terms of thinking about the family farm assumes that the family farm is split into two different spheres. The farm and the household. And within spheres, women and men play very different roles. Two spheres with men and women playing two different roles. So as an ideology, because ideologies are not necessarily grounded in truth. One of the things were going to be looking at is how powerful this ideology is and yet when we look at the reality on the ground, it doesnt really reflect what we see in terms of the family farm in the u. S. So to put some boundaries on what were talking about today, our focus is on the family farm and were really going to be looking, were going to be picking out the history of the family farm since the 1860s and really from the time of the homestead act. Those are our boundaries. If were thinking about the family farm, it has some important geographical dimensions. The family farm is most represented in the midwest where we are here in iowa in the great plains. And it largely affected white men and women. So on thursday were going to turn our attention to the experience of africanamerican women which also had an important dimension in the south in terms of slavery and sharecropping agricultural. What were talking about is not a universal experience among every woman everywhere, but has some important historical and geographical and structural dimensions to it. So what do we mean when we talk about the agrarian ideology and the family farm . So agrarianism is a very old ideology, thousands of years old. And this ideology is rooted in the belief that farmers have economic and political primacy over other industries. That farming is the most valuable, the most moral of all industry and all economic endeavors. So in the u. S. When we think about agrarianism, its Thomas Jefferson, our third president , who most clearly embodies the idea of agrarian ideology. So Thomas Jefferson spoke about agrarianism, he wrote about it and was perhaps the most influential in shaping this idea. So when jefferson talked about agrarianism, he framed it specifically in relation to family farms. Jefferson as we all know was actually a slave owner. Perhaps theres some irony there. But in terms of developing the republic in the u. S. , jefferson argued in favor of, you know, taking the land that was taken from native americans, that it should be disposed of among people who wanted to work it. So if you wanted to work the land, you should have the right to own your own property. So Thomas Jefferson is in favor of widespread ownership of what are we going to do about this . Okay. So Thomas Jefferson was in favor of widespread ownership of the land. So whats important when we think about how influential this ideology was is that if we think today when most think about farming, they think about family farming. There have been many different structural forms of agriculture in the u. S. Were going to talk about, again, slavery, sharecropping on thursday as an example. So part of the way we can appreciate how influential agrarian ideology was is that because it influenced our idea, our perception that farming is predominantly family farming where the people who own the land should work the land. So agrarianism was what scholars called a gendered ideology. In thinking about the family farm, jefferson put forth the view that the family farm was two different spheres. So even if we call it family farm, were thinking of this unit. But he had this view of it being two different spheres. The farm and the household. And within those spheres, women and men would play very different roles. So here his view, which, again, its incredibly influential, his view was that men would be the property owners, men would be the agriculture producers. If you own property that gave you the right to engage in Civic Affairs for the early part of our history, also to vote, and that women, this sphere would be the household. They wouldnt own property and they would be responsible for caring for the house. They wouldnt be engaged in agriculture production. And that their role was really to support the endeavors of the male farmer. Okay . So this was jeffersons argument. So jeffersons his view of dispersion of the land and control of that land by family farmers really you know, when we think about our history here in the u. S. , really its the homestead that we think of as being the fruition of this agrarian view of land settlement. I know we all learn about the homestead act which was enacted in 1862. This gave anyone who wanted to work the land including women the ability to own 160 acres, they were given that land for free, so long as they worked it. They stayed on it for five years and so forth they were entitled to it. This was a really important act mostly in the midwest and the great plains. If we look at farm numbers, what we see is this act together with other things, development of the railroads, markets, and development of institutions like universities and so forth. What we saw after that was the explosion in the number of farms. In 1860 we had less than 2 million farms in the u. S. By 1935 when it peaked, we had almost 7 million. 6. 8 million. That was the peak of the number of farms. So this was an incredibly important act together with a whole number of other endeavors that led to the family farm. But, again, the family farm was viewed as having these distinct spheres with these distinct roles for men and women. So, what scholars argue is that when we think of the agrarian ideology, and, again, were going to illustrate this through examples today, is this ideology has been extremely influential. If we look at our social institutions, if we look at policies, laws, education and so forth, we see it reflected in those. If we look at attitudes and values and beliefs with an individual or familial or community or societal, we see this ideology permeating through our attitudes and beliefs. Again, this idea, okay, that within the family farm, the family farm has primacy. We value it enormously. But within that, we have clearly different roles for men and women who operate within different spheres. So were going to look at three different examples to illustrate the agrarian ideology and our goal today is to bring it back to those questions we pose. What we want to try and think about is what effect has this agrarian ideology had on, one, womens invisibility within agricultural, and, two, the gender gap. So if we think about why does it matter that the farm is separated from the household. How does that influence womens visibility . How does it influence the gender gap . Thats what were going to be thinking about. The first thing were going to do is were going to look at agrarian identities. And were going to look at a short clip of a commercial of so god made a farmer. How much of you maybe i should ask, how many of you have not seen this commercial . Okay. Oh, okay. A small handful have not seen this commercial. So this was a commercial that ran during the 2013 super bowl. And it was advertising does anyone remember what it was advertising . Dodge trucks. What kind of trucks . Dodge. I think. Dodge rams. So it advertised at the end of the commercial youll see a truck. I think you see other trucks as well. So it ran during the super bowl. And it was an incredibly emotional and impactful commercial, people loved it. Theres been over 23 million views of this commercial, articles have been written about it in the media. You can read so many comments. People absolutely loved this commercial. Were going to watch it and what i want you to do is i want you to think about the images in the commercial, but i also want you to think about the language thats being used. So what youre hearing is actually a speech by paul harvey, who was a conservative radio broadcaster, and the speech is from 1978. So we can see that its a few decades old and its being used. And as we watch it and as we listen, what i want you to think and you can, you know, jot down some notes because youre going to come back and share it with the rest of the class is one of the reasons i like to show this video is i think its a really nice example of the agrarian ideology. Think about how is the farmer represented . How is the identity of the farmer represented . What kinds of traits are associated with the farmer . How are men and women represented in this commercial . And on the eighth day, god looked down on his planned paradise and said, i need a caretaker. So god made a farmer. God said, i need somebody willing to get up before dawn, milk cows, work all days in the field, milk cows again, eat supper and then stay up past midnight at a school meeting. I need somebody who can sit up with a colt, watch it die, dry his eyes and say next year. I need somebody who can make harness out of haywire feed sacks. And somebody who can work till noon and put in another 72 hours. God said i need somebody Strong Enough to clear trees, yet gentle enough to wean cows and pigs, so god made a farmer. It had to be somebody to plow deep and straight and not cut corners. Somebody whod bail a family together with a soft bond of sharing, who would laugh and then sigh and then reply, with smiling eyes, when his son says, that he wants to spend his life doing what dad does. God made a farmer. So, take a minute and chat with your neighbor or not chat with your neighbor, but think about how the agrarian ideology is captured in this film. And think about how farmers are represented, how the role of farm, the identity of the farmer is represented. Dont worry about writing too much. Its more just jot some notes to think about. So, who wants to volunteer and tell us what you saw or what you heard in terms of how the farmer and farming is represented . What are some immediate things . The audio is directed extremely towards men since it just references the farmer as a male, but the images come back and it shows females doing odds and ends work. So its bipolar to whats being presented. So the text and the images focus largely on men, good. I thought in the beginning it started with nongender language, it needed to be someone who blah, blah, blah. Towards the end we did get into the man ideal, i think. But i think it did still shine a light on women, especially since like this was from back in 1978. Not nearly as much as it could have, but i dont think they were ignored either. So women werent entirely excluded. It affected the language at the beginning, was sort of all inclusive and thinking about it historically. The language is very like not gender bias, until it says and when the young boy looked at his dad and says i want to do what dad does. Thats when you get the fact its male. The masculine voice, paul harveys voice is obviously deep, that gives you the idea that the farmer is male, because the images they show a variety of different people to older men and women, who were hardworking, you can tell they were in the field, to the next generation of the young girl in the field. Thats a really nice point. So all the ways we pick things up. How different might we have interpreted this image if it had been a womans voiceover, of course its paul harvey, a man, perhaps that makes us think were talking about men. Gender bias with the voiceover because even with that one part, i feel like every dad everywhere wants his son to grow up to be just like him. I think the stockbroker dad wants his kid to be like i think dad is cool. Its hard to take something made in 1978, where it was very male dominated traditionally and turn it into something where we are now. But i think it was paul harvey they wanted to use because of the tradition of what he was. He was so well known for his ag marketing and whatnot. Again, part of it is because were looking at this historic, theyre taking a historical speech and putting it onto contemporary images. Did anyone have a different view or another take on how . Thinking about these different spheres. Were talking about family farming. So last year what we saw was the farm. What sort of images of the household did we see in terms of this family farm, where the house is integral to family farming . Yeah . It also the video showed some of women and men in the house together. They cook the food, bring it out to the guys in the field and they go back and work on the house. They kind of bring the family together through the house. But its the male at the head of the household and the language then is bringing them together. I think what shes saying, per that language, too, as part of the farmers job is to mend the family together or bail the family together its almost talking about the same person. So you already think there is gender bias between them and you can see thats the head of the household versus the Woman Holding everything together. Cool. So one of the things, you know, when we think about family farming, we think of the household as integral. Well talk about that as we move through the lecture. The household is least visible in this image. The focus is more on the productive aspect, the farm aspect. And if you look at women, so were talking about family farming. Right . Family farming. Women, i think there are three images of women out of the 18. Someone counted them up once. So there are some women but theres not many of them, so men predominate in the images and as one of you commented, the image we see is the boy will take over the farm and, of course, most of us, as was mentioned, often want our children to take over what weve done, but we can also interrogate that, which is what were going to do. So if we think about the agrarian ideology, and this clip, the intent of it was to really help illustrate how both historically because you guys pointed out that the speech is historical, 1978 both historically but even today, the power of the agrarian ideology where we see the spheres differently and the roles of men and women on family farms as quite distinct. We can think about that in terms of the identity of the farmer. When we talk about farmers, when we talk about family farming, the farmer is typically identified as male. So we have these strong images of men. Often working independently. You know, working outside, working with crops and livestock and machinery, so these are the primary images we get of the family farm that the farmer is a male. And when we think about the traits that are associated with the farmer, they are masculine traits. So things we associate with men often being very strong, being independent, being tough, being persistent. You know, you could see the men in the images. They were creative with the different challenges they had. They were resilient in overcoming the challenges that nature and others presented to them and so forth. And part of this helps us come back to the idea of agrarianism. It helps us recognize why the status of farmers is so high in the u. S. So if you do a survey of the american public, farmers have a really high status and family farms have a really high status. And part of it is because of this idea that, you know, farmers embody so many of the traits that we think are really important and that we value in the u. S. Again, independence, hardworking, resilient, these kinds of langu