L' « échappée belle » ou la mobilisation des femmes dans l'agriculture en France

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to discuss phenomena affecting women during the past 2 decades of "general mobilization" toward modernization and productivity in agriculture in France, including how the meaning and use of time and space in the factory have been reinterpreted and applied in the sexual division of labor in agriculture and how the imaginary life has been a weapon of survival for women. The massive effect of transfers of knowledge from the domestic to the professional spheres and the lack of recognition of the qualifications of women in the new forms of work are also considered. Since 1950, women in small family agriculture have been caught up in a policy of intensification and rationalization of production in which, as in a factory, the evolution of work has obeyed certain principles of time and space. At the time, men as decision makers have resisted sharing decision making power with women and have refused to concede that women bring unique qualifications and potential contributions to the agricultural enterprise based on their previous roles in family agriculture and in household management. It is an impossible task to internalize the new principles of time and space, respond to the demands of mobility and interchangeability of workers, and integrate biological, natural, and domestic time and space proper to women's work, and to attempt to do so is to be subjected to double constraints and conflicing demands. Possible responses to the situation include neurotic hyperactivity, illness, or somatizatation, but many women seek escape in imaginative life and social activity. Among the special competencies women have brought to agricultural work from their domestic backgrounds are attention to detail and minutiae, the ability to measure dosages with accuracy, and ease with living things.