On Behalf of the Family Farm: Iowa Farm Women's Activism since 1945

Introduction

Introduction For it is a grim but bracing truth that we must constantly re-vitalize and re-create our cherished ideals. thelma jOhnsOn, ChairwOman Of the iOwa farm BUreaU federatiOn wOmen’s COmmittee, 1969 in aPril 1970 farm wOman Helen Karnes posed the following question to readers of the Farm Journal: Has anyone ever noticed the treatment women get from farm organizations? Women rarely served on boards or took on leadership roles. At meetings, men assumed that women wanted to watch fashion shows or engage in “girl talk,” rather than “listen in on meetings intended to improve our farming.” Because most of the women Karnes knew saw themselves as partners on the farm with their husbands, she wanted to know why more women were not present at meetings. The problem, she decided, was a dismissive attitude on the part of men. “There’s no law that says we can’t walk in,” she concluded, “but it would be nice to feel welcome.” In response, the editors of Farm Journal attempted to ignite a debate among the readership, asking, “Are women themselves in part responsible ? Orare farmers more conservative in giving women theirdue than men in other organizations?” The editors even offered to pay for any letters they published, but not one letter on the topic appeared in the Farm Journal over the following year.1 That readers failed to respond, or that editors did not publish responses, is at first surprising given the provocative nature of the questions. Throughout the twentieth century, Midwestern farm women claimed to have reciprocal relationships with men and to have shaped their communities through civic, religious, and agricultural organizations. Karnes made a significant departure from the rhetoric of mutuality between farm men and women when she identified sexism as a problem. She questioned long-standing gendered divisions of labor, the certainty of gendered spaces in the countryside, and men’s dominance over public spaces.This posed a risk to a farm woman who 2 • intrOdUCtiOn likely depended on men, both within her family and in the community, for access to land, financial resources, and community institutions.The readers’ silence on the issue may not be an indication of apathy then but perhaps a hesitancy to grapple directly with loaded questions that could potentially disrupt vulnerable rural neighborhoods and communities in the midst of rapid social and economic change. In the Midwest after 1945, incorporating women more fully into the public discussions of agricultural policy and production required a disruption of time-honored gendered divisions of labor and the development of entirely new, complex strategies, not only in organizations but in rural communities, on family farms, and between married couples. Karnes’s experience, like those of women in a variety of farm organizations , offers a glimpse into the diverse strategies that women employed after 1945 to assert their identities as producers in communities dependent on the rhythms and customs of agricultural production. Confronting the realities of modern agriculture required considerable adjustment on multiple fronts. For agricultural organizations leaders and members wondered who should speak for agriculture, to whom they should speak, and how.Throughout the twentieth century, this remained a male responsibilityas women worked primarily in supportive capacities. By the early 1970s, however, small groups of women began to assert that organizing could and should become women’s work as their husbands became consumed with the demands of modern agricultural production.Those who wanted to be effective advocates argued that they wasted their talents by limiting their activities to domestic, maternal , and community issues.They needed access to public spaces and funding for their work. They needed to speak on behalf of farming as a whole, and their voices needed to influence policy. Drawing on notions of romantic agrarianism, whiteness, and middle-class privilege, farm women developed home-grown agrarian feminisms that moved them into these public spaces. They practiced a “politics of dependence” that allowed them to challenge male authority in state and federal politics, agribusinesses, and farm organizations byemphasizing theirexperiences as farm laborers in addition to their dependent roles as wives and mothers in heterosexual marriages. Arriving at this point was part of an evolutionary process wherein women presented new interpretations of time-honored agrarian ideals that identified women as public leaders. The purpose of this book is to explore how women navigated gendered dynamics and sexism in the countryside as they dealt with the power and the limitations of social feminisms and transformative leadership experi- [3.143.4.181] Project MUSE (2024-04...