The Rural Midwest Since World War II

6. Farm women in the Midwest since 1945

In 1950, Clara Fenstermann of Delaware County, Iowa, penned a letter to the Iowa Bureau Farmer, a periodical of the Iowa Farm Bureau Federation, explaining the new responsibilities of farm women in the postwar economy. “The modern farm wife does not stay ‘cooped up’ in a house,” she asserted, “but is helping her husband decide which crop to plant, which heifers to keep… when to sell the hogs, and also what would be the best way to spend the money.” Fenstermann envisioned her daughter’s future as a farmwife, mother, and housekeeper but added “farm partner” to that list and encouraged her daughter to participate in 4-H livestock programs. Raising, showing, and selling livestock provided valuable “training” that would “come in handy as she and her future mate plan their herds, dairy, beef, or hogs.”1 Fenstermann’s expectations for her daughter demonstrate how, in the years after 1945, rural midwestern women encountered both continuity and change in their work lives, families, and communities. For generations, rural midwestern women had identified as helpmeets and contributors to family farms and small communities. They created rich social networks and emphasized their roles as community builders. In her study of European and Native women on the Wisconsin frontier, historian Joan Jensen found that women shared roles as household laborers, healers, educators, spiritual leaders, and local political actors. Though patriarchal social structures and gendered diSIX —Farm Women in the Midwest since 1945 Jenny Barker Devine Farm Women in the Midwest since 1945 161 visions of labor limited women’s participation in public activities, women created complex kinship and neighborhood networks for shared labor and exchange that encompassed churches, businesses, schools, welfare agencies, and social and political clubs. These networks persisted well into the twentieth century and remained a defining feature of rural life in the decades after 1945. In these years, depopulation and agricultural mechanization dramatically altered rural landscapes and demographics. Rural electrification eased the physical labor required for household chores, and trends toward large-scale poultry, egg, and milk production eliminated traditional women ’s work in the farmyard. Yet, even as these transformations unfolded and outward migration to urban areas led to the rapid decline of female kinship and neighborhood networks, women continued to seek out new “sisters,” as well as social, economic, and political opportunities that stressed their importance as farm partners, business owners, landowners, and economic contributors.2 The geographic expanse and economic diversity of the 12-state midwestern region lends itself to unique experiences based on location, occupation, social class, ethnicity, and race. As a result, generalizations about the Midwest prove difficult given the significant differences between the diversified farms in the Corn Belt, the small dairy farms of the Great Lakes region, and the extensive cattle-ranching and wheat-growing operations of the Great Plains. Historians Andrew R.L. Cayton and Peter S. Onuf have argued that despite these regional variations, a midwestern identity emerged in the nineteenth century that emphasized capitalism, consumerism, and middle-class values central to the creation of “responsible, earnest, industrious citizens.” Women’s activities played a significant role in fostering this regional identity that was rooted in agricultural production, but relied less on geographic similarities and more on idealized standards of behavior and aspirations for economic independence. Rural women active in religious, social, political, voluntary organizations upheld such values, often drawing upon agrarian ideals that distinguished rural midwesterners as stalwarts of democracy and providers of the nation’s food supply, even if their own circumstances did not necessarily reflect such romanticized visions of country living.3 The nuclear family, patriarchy, and gendered hierarchies rest at the heart of this emerging midwestern identity, leading most women to identify as members of families: as dependent wives, mothers, and daughters who relied on male heads of household for their livelihood. Within this framework, women utilized neighborhood and community networks to find intrinsic and economic value in their labor. In so doing, they “championed human worth based on labor and gender interdependence” to assert the importance 162 Jenny Barker Devine of their work on family farms. After 1945, however, the mechanization of agriculture and a greater orientation toward specialized, capital-intensive, large-scale agribusiness operations appeared to remove women from agricultural production. This seemed to compromise the mutual valuations of labor that had characterized family farming for generations. Historian Mary Neth asserted that women sought new strategies to maintain their involvement in family farm labor...