TY - JOUR
T1 - Agricultural education
T2 - Gender identity and knowledge exchange
AU - Trauger, Amy
AU - Sachs, Carolyn
AU - Barbercheck, Mary
AU - Kiernan, Nancy Ellen
AU - Brasier, Kathy
AU - Findeis, Jill
N1 - Funding Information:
PA-WAgN is governed by a steering committee composed of farmers, educators and agricultural professionals that meets four times each year. Because Pennsylvania is a large state, the membership is divided into six regions with one to four regional representatives acting as liaisons between the membership and the PA-WAgN staff and faculty researchers to help develop educational programs. Two employees located at a university plan and implement educational and networking programs in cooperation with farmers, educators and the steering committee. The organization is funded by two integrated research and extension grants from the United States Department of Agriculture, and outreach funds from Pennsylvania State Cooperative Extension, USDA Risk Management Education and the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture. The research focuses on the educational and technical training needs of women farmers in Pennsylvania, as well as on the livelihood strategies and sustainable agriculture practices of women farmers throughout the northeast region of the USA. The research is overseen and carried out by a team of six faculty members across four academic disciplines.
PY - 2008/10
Y1 - 2008/10
N2 - Women farmers are underserved in agricultural education and technical assistance. Long held social constructions of farming women as 'farmwives' and in some cases 'the bookkeepers' rather than farmers or decision-makers influence the direction of most educational programming delivered through extension programs in land-grant universities in the United States. Consequently, many women farmers generally view these spaces as hostile, rather than helpful environments. This paper uses the agricultural training framework developed by Liepins and Schick (1998) to analyze our research on developing educational programming for women farmers. We conducted five focus groups with members of the Pennsylvania Women's Agricultural Network (PA-WAgN) to better understand women farmers' needs for education. Women farmers reported the kinds of knowledge and information they want, in what kinds of contexts, and through what means of communication. We adapt and extend the original theoretical framework developed by Liepins and Schick to incorporate the seriality of women's identities, their discourses of embodiment and the agency granted to them through social networks. Through a presentation of the results of these focus groups, we discuss both the relevance of gender to agricultural education and the importance of the network model in providing education to women farmers.
AB - Women farmers are underserved in agricultural education and technical assistance. Long held social constructions of farming women as 'farmwives' and in some cases 'the bookkeepers' rather than farmers or decision-makers influence the direction of most educational programming delivered through extension programs in land-grant universities in the United States. Consequently, many women farmers generally view these spaces as hostile, rather than helpful environments. This paper uses the agricultural training framework developed by Liepins and Schick (1998) to analyze our research on developing educational programming for women farmers. We conducted five focus groups with members of the Pennsylvania Women's Agricultural Network (PA-WAgN) to better understand women farmers' needs for education. Women farmers reported the kinds of knowledge and information they want, in what kinds of contexts, and through what means of communication. We adapt and extend the original theoretical framework developed by Liepins and Schick to incorporate the seriality of women's identities, their discourses of embodiment and the agency granted to them through social networks. Through a presentation of the results of these focus groups, we discuss both the relevance of gender to agricultural education and the importance of the network model in providing education to women farmers.
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U2 - 10.1016/j.jrurstud.2008.03.007
DO - 10.1016/j.jrurstud.2008.03.007
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:50949134195
SN - 0743-0167
VL - 24
SP - 432
EP - 439
JO - Journal of Rural Studies
JF - Journal of Rural Studies
IS - 4
ER -