Beeconomy: What Women and Bees Can Teach Us about Local Trade and the Global Market

Introduction: Piping Up

Introduction Piping Up Women beekeepers have been shortchanged in the beekeeping history books when they actually have made many significant contributions through the years. —Joe Graham, editor of American Bee Journal, 1979 I have been asked, why write a book about women and bees? The subtext of the question is that we surely do not need a book about women beekeepers. Nor do I offer any new beekeeping secrets. I am certainly not the best writer on this topic, and neither is my gender considered adequate qualification. But, with the United States losing one in every three hives of honey bees and Central Europe losing one in four, more women should consider keeping bees.1 If we have more beekeepers, regardless of gender, perhaps the immediate crisis of bee loss will be addressed and our agricultural sectors will have appropriate pollination to feed the world’s citizens. Colony losses aside, women have much at stake when bee losses are as high as 30 percent. They often have the most direct access to food eaten by family members. They generally live longer than their male counterparts. And women continue to be paid inequitably regardless of location, education, and religion. Some women may 1 Introduction 2 benefit from this book because it could prompt them to consider new ways to supplement incomes, improve family nutrition, and enjoy the intangible benefits of beekeeping as an activity. Whether they are nursing infants, preparing meals for children, or keeping track of medications for elderly parents, women tend to have more links with nutrition than their male counterparts, even though more men in Western societies are participating in domestic responsibilities than ever before. Centuries ago, English writer Mary Wollstonecraft wrote that society should prioritize women’s education precisely because mothers are the link between children and nutrition. Healthy mothers will beget healthy children, she surmised. Wollstonecraft intoned to anyone who would listen: “It is vain to expect the present race of weak mothers . . . to take that reasonable care of a child’s body, which is necessary to lay the foundation of a good constitution. . . . The weakness of the mother will be visited on the children.”2 Wollstonecraft first articulated this argument in the 1790s, but the problem of children not having access to affordable fruits and vegetables has had long-term, systemic consequences through the centuries. Even now, the global repercussions of unhealthy diets for children are obesity, childhood diabetes, and dental problems. It is not just the multiple health risks that can be problematic if children do not develop good eating habits early in life; children will also lack the quality of life that comes from eating good food. Children have a right to enjoy biting into blackberries that splatter on their tongues or slurping the sweetness of a watermelon that has been properly pollinated. I do not think women are deliberately ignorant about the links between pollination and nutrition. Socialization and discrimination have shaped perceptions about women’s opportunities in agriculture generally, and specifically in apiculture. Beekeeping can be labor intensive . In honey-hunting cultures such as those in Africa and India, bee activities can be hazardous. Within the past two hundred years, socialization patterns in Western civilizations have reinforced wom- Piping Up 3 en’s choices of steadier, service-oriented positions, such as teachers, nurses, clerks, and retail workers. Agriculture is no longer a reliable step to a middle-class income in some industrial civilizations. Beekeeping is not approved “women’s work” in some theocratic countries , nor is it even, in some societies, a socially acceptable activity. Discrimination, which can take overt or subtle forms in the apiculture world, has also been a factor, although less so than in other agricultural sectors. Before the twentieth century, restricted admissions to schools and universities discouraged women from the knowledge-based economies associated with apiculture science and extension. Affirmative action laws have eased some overt discrimination, but generally speaking, salary discrimination continues to affect women, regardless of profession. In 2010, white US women still made seventy-seven cents for every dollar earned by their male counterparts . Black women earned sixty-eight cents for every dollar. According to Merlene Davis, a US-based writer, “The Equal Pay Act has been on the books since 1963, when women were earning 59 cents for every dollar earned by men. So, in the ensuing 47 years, that law has increased our pay...