Farm Daughters and Industrialization: A Comparative Analysis of Dairying in New York and Sweden, 1860-1920

Both Swedish and American dairying industrialized at about the same time. Centralized factories removed processing from the farm household, where women traditionally had dominated production. In Sweden, the central involvement of women in dairy production continued as women were trained to work in buttermaking factories using up-to-date technology. In the United States, however, the number of women working in cheese factories quickly diminished and soon reached negligible proportions. Why did change in dairying have such different results for women? This article argues that young rural women made varied choices based on the vastly different structure of wealth and opportunities in the two countries, and that they evaluated their choices on the basis of relative wages as well as according to the values of personal development, status, and independence.