Working to save the farm: Indiana and Mississippi rural women, 1940–1990
Abstract
"Working to Save the Farm" examines the work lives of rural women in Indiana and Mississippi from 1940 to 1990. Although often denied the title farmer, women through home production, production agriculture, and off-the-farm employment, made significant economic contributions to rural economies, agriculture, and ultimately individual farms. To do so women's responsibilities both on and off-the-farm adapted as American farms became part of agribusiness. Race, class, agricultural commodities, and geography influenced rural women's contributions, which transformed in both states during World War II. Mississippi's female sharecroppers did not participate in home production, but through their cotton work raised and harvested the state's main agricultural product. As labor opportunities increased for African American men, black women became the largest portion of Mississippi's cotton workforce, a distinction they held until mechanization replaced them and they struggled with unemployment. Through home production, including pin money activities and food for home consumption, the wives of owner-operators, both white and black, decreased their family's cash expenditures. Consequently they had more funds to spend on consumer goods or to reinvest in the farm. The agricultural commodity grown on a farm also affected how women participated in farming. Indiana's practice of Corn Belt agriculture and manufacturer's recruitment of farm laborers resulted in farm wives taking on the work of former hired hands. Depending on a farm's crop, the wife might care for hogs, do fieldwork, or complete recordkeeping tasks. Still others decided that the salary of off-farm employment better aided the family. Mississippi's rural women went to work due to the establishment of the Balancing Agriculture with Industry (BAWI) program. By providing funds for the construction of manufacturing plants, the state lured northern firms to relocate and hire white women, whose salary supplemented the profits of their farming husbands. Other farms diversified by mechanizing and expanding pin money operations, which often resulted in the wife losing production responsibilities. As the twentieth century came to a close America's nostalgia towards family farms and the agrarian ideal caused Americans to praise the farmer, but not his wife, who contributed just as much in helping rural America prosper.
Degree
Ph.D.
Advisors
Hurt, Purdue University.
Subject Area
American history|Womens studies
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