Women farmers and women farmer’s identities

As the global context of farming continues to change, women and men involved in agriculture continue to define and redefine their relationships to farming. Over the past two decades, researchers have observed a significant shift in women’s farm identities. Theories positing the shifting demographics of global agriculturalists in the US and Europe have benefited from rich scholarship on women farmers and women farm identities. This chapter offers a picture of these shifting identities. We address the structural and demographic changes in who is farming in the US and Europe and explore how these changes are linked with women’s on-farm identities. After providing a description of social psychology’s identity theory, we conclude with an examination of the current literature on women’s farm identities and present a brief discussion of future research directions that will increase our understanding of and support for women farmers in Europe and the US.