Farming, Gender and Aspirations Across Young People’s Life Course: Attempting to Keep Things Open While Becoming a Farmer (original) (raw)
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2018
Based on 25 case studies from the global comparative study ‘GENNOVATE: Enabling gender equality in agricultural and environmental innovation’, this paper explores rural young women’s and men’s occupational aspirations and trajectories in India, Mali, Malawi, Morocco, Mexico, Nigeria, and the Philippines. We draw upon qualitative data from 50 sex-segregated focus groups with the youth to show that across the study’s regional contexts, young rural women and men predominantly aspire for formal blue and white-collar jobs. Yet, they experience an aspirationachievement gap, as the promise of their education for securing the formal employment they seek is unfulfilled, and they continue to farm in their family’s production. Whereas some young men aspired to engage in knowledge-intensive or ‘modern’ agriculture, young women did not express any such interest. Framing our analysis within a relational approach, we contend that various gender norms that discriminate against women in agriculture ...
Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems, 2022
Agriculture remains vital in ensuring the food security of developing economies like India, yet increasing rural-urban migration, an aging farm population, and waning interest of rural youth in agriculture are emerging concerns. This paper focuses on the aspirations of farm parents and their children in agriculture, the challenges they confront, and potential solutions. We draw on qualitative data from two rural sites in Southern India, different from each other in their agro-ecological and social contexts, to point to the material, social, relational, and structural factors shaping aspirations. First, agrarian distress, resulting from climate variability and market uncertainty, affects farm households' socioeconomic status, resulting in farmers' aspiration failure in agriculture. Farm parents then focus on educating their children, aspiring for secure non-farm jobs for their sons, and finding suitable marriage partners, also in non-farm employment, for their daughters. Whil...
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This research paper is about examining the aspirations of young people who became farmers in particular area – Pinrang regency in South Sulawesi, Indonesia. Through conducting semi-structure interview with life history approach combined with participant observations, this research abled to generate the life trajectory of six respondents from different background, age and gender. By looking at life trajectory of six respondents, where the three amongst them are member of a farmers’ community, this research found out that inter-generational contract do contribute on negotiating young farmers’ aspiration, all the more where the family institution appear to be the sole source of welfare for young people. While on the other hand, intra-generational dimension through the locus of a farmers community namely KTSS, helps to enhance their aspirations wherein farming still be taken into account on their future endeavour.
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This chapter reflects on the changing place of young men and women in Indonesian agriculture, based on available secondary sources and some preliminary local-level studies. Contrary to general perceptions or expectations about youth, agriculture still employs a much higher proportion of young people than industry or any other sector, and this proportion has been relatively stable in recent years. The chapter first provides a general picture of agrarian structures in Indonesia. The next section summarizes what we know about the changing position of young men and women within these structures, including: the age and gender of farmers, modes of intergenerational transfer of farm land and property, young people’s apparent turn away from agriculture, patterns of rural youth mobility, agricultural education, and institutions representing rural youth interests. The main part of this chapter concludes with some reflections on policy. The final part then explains the selection of locations a...
Young people and the division of labour in farming families
The Sociological Review, 2008
The family farm has been identified as the main unit of agricultural production in Britain and it has been widely studied as an economic unit in agricultural research. However, it is also a social unit: one with a division of labour based upon gender and generation. Here we will consider a relatively unexplored area of agricultural production: the contribution of children to the family farm, based upon a quantitative survey of young people in a rural area and detailed qualitative interviews. The approach is to look at the farm family in terms of a ‘household work strategy’ although in the paper we argue that this should take into account the importance of moral obligation and patriarchal ideology. The importance of gender and generation are explored as intersecting factors in the division of labour.