Reinventing rural femininities in the post-productivist Finnish countryside

Abstract

This paper examines how Finnish farm women interpret their own position as women on family farms. Following the poststructuralist approach in rural gender studies, the analysis focuses on the meanings which women produce regarding agrarian femininity. For this purpose, interview material on their everyday life stories are compared with the discourses on rural femininities in the Koti magazine, which is published by the most important organization representing farm women in Finland. It is concluded that the positions in which farm women present themselves are in accordance with the discourses on rural femininity produced and mediated by this magazine. Farm women present themselves, and they are expected to be, economically active agents in the post-productivist countryside.