Great Plains Studies, Center for
Date of this Version
1989
Abstract
Our recognition of women's involvement in Great Plains agriculture is frequently linked to stereotyped images and a romanticized perspective on farmers. These notions have been cultivated over time in the absence of careful research or historical documents that realistically detail women's work on the family farm. Except for collections of oral histories, letters, and diaries, we have relatively few written records of rural women's agricultural heritage in the Great Plains. Traditional images of women and girls on farms show them as helpmates whose labor is only indirectly related to agriculture. 1 Their activities center predominantly on family and domestic chores. In contrast, men and to some extent boys confine their efforts to farm tasks.
Comments
Published in Great Plains Quarterly [GPQ 9 (Winter 1989): 36-47]. Copyright 1989 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska—Lincoln.