Women Working off the Farm: Reconstructing Gender Identity in Danish Agriculture

Most women living on Danish farms work off the farm and have a non-farming education and background. The first part of the paper discusses how farm women’s identity is understood theoretically and then suggests a perspective inspired by theories of modernity and everyday life, enabling a view of farm women as knowledgeable actors. The second part is an empirical study, based on qualitative interviews, of how farm women who work outside agriculture experience living on a farm. The study shows that living on a farm poses specific dilemmas for these women because they individually have to reconcile practices on the farm with norms and practices they bring with them from their earlier experiences, as well as with norms associated with gender relations more generally in society. However, the women are actively trying to reconcile their different experiences and by doing so they are reconstructing female identity and, in turn, gender identity in agriculture.