Benjamin F. Shambaugh Award honorable mention
On Behalf of the Family Farm traces the development of women鈥檚 activism and agrarian feminisms in the Midwest after 1945, as farm women鈥檚 lives were being transformed by the realities of modern agriculture. Author Jenny Barker Devine demonstrates that in an era when technology, depopulation, and rapid economic change dramatically altered rural life, midwestern women met these challenges with their own feminine vision of farm life. Their 鈥渁grarian feminisms鈥 offered an alternative too, but not necessarily a rejection of, second-wave feminism.
Focusing on women in four national farm organizations in Iowa鈥攖he Farm Bureau, the Farmers Union, the National Farm Organization, and the Porkettes鈥擠evine highlights specific moments in time when farm women had to reassess their roles and strategies for preserving and improving their way of life. Rather than retreat from the male-dominated world of agribusiness and mechanized production, postwar women increasingly asserted their identities as agricultural producers and demanded access to public spaces typically reserved for men.
Over the course of several decades, they developed agrarian feminisms that combined cherished rural traditions with female empowerment, cooperation, and collaboration. 海角乱伦社区farm women emphasized working partnerships between husbands and wives, women鈥檚 work in agricultural production, and women鈥檚 unique ways of understanding large-scale conventional farming.
鈥淭his is a concise, carefully researched, cogently argued, and engagingly written study that fills a significant gap in our understanding of rural America and particularly of rural activism. Devine convincingly argues that farm women activists constituted a different kind of feminist, but were feminists nonetheless.鈥濃擬elissa Walker, author, All We Knew Was to Farm: Rural Women in the Upcountry South, 1914鈥1941
"This book is a valuable resource for Family and Consumer Sciences (FCS) personnel in education and Extension. It easily fits into an advanced vocational agricultural or sociology cirriculum. Overall, it is an important educational resource about women's changing roles in both agriculture and society. Although the book is focused on Iowa, I am confident that it describes most of the Midwestern agrarian states. The changing role of women is of utmost importance in the FCS curriculum. Progress has been deliberate and has taken years but farm women today are a very important part of the rural landscape."鈥Journal of Family & Consumer Sciences
鈥淚n this very readable book, Jenny Barker Devine shows that rural women who disdained feminism behaved like 鈥榓grarian feminists.鈥 Banding together to confront rapid and all-encompassing changes, women in 海角乱伦社区in the decades after World War II navigated between the demands of a patriarchal society built around land, agriculture, and family and a strong sense of pride in themselves as mothers, wives, and women. This study will provoke more than its share of spirited conversation among Iowans as well as academics.鈥濃擜ndrew Cayton, Miami University
鈥淒evine redefines midwestern farm women鈥檚 activism after World War II by tracing the subtle and powerful shifts in gender relationships in rural America. On Behalf of the Family Farm brings a fresh look at the complexities of how farm women shaped their organizations, claimed public space, and redefined their identities.鈥濃擟arolyn Sachs, Pennsylvania State University
2014 Benjamin F. Shambaugh Award Honorable Mention
