Farm Women and the Empowerment Potential in Value-Added Agriculture
Résumé
While the number of women in the U.S. is growing, less clear is whether increasing participation in agriculture translates into empowerment opportunities. Are invisibility and disempowerment lingering expressions of farm women's experience? Using qualitative data drawn from interviews with Michigan value-added farmers, we examine the extent to which women have been able to experience empowerment, and the ways in which value-added agriculture specifically fosters an empowering context. We adopt a conceptualization of empowerment from the development scholarship in order to establish a baseline for scrutiny, viewing empowerment as a multi-dimensional process constituting the 'power to' realize one's goals, the opportunity to exercise 'power with' others, and the ability to find and nurture 'power within' the self. Our findings indicate that value-added agriculture provides a unique context for women's empowerment. At the same time, the extent to which value added-agriculture constitutes a venue for women's empowerment is complex, multifaceted, and requires constant negotiation. It can be organized and performed in such a way as to subvert the empowerment process by confining women to specific social locations that may reify oppressive structures.
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