The Gendering of the Postwar Agricultural Labor Shortage in Saxony, 1918–1925

Abstract

In March 1922, with spring planting imminent, the Agricultural Chamber of the Saxon Freestate surveyed 790 local agricultural associations, seeking information on the character and dimensions of the rural labor shortage. 640 reports were returned within six weeks, signaling Saxon farmers' desperation to be heard. According to their estimates, Saxon agriculture lacked a minimum of 7,834 men and 11,164 women, or just under 19,000 workers. Despite the substantial number of men needed, farmers overwhelmingly bemoaned the lack of young, single women willing and able to work in Saxon agriculture, and warned of dire consequences for both agricultural producers and the general public if the crisis were not resolved. Indeed, small and medium-sized Saxon farmers' testimonies about the postwar labor shortage linked agriculture's potential for recovery to the preservation of prewar gender divisions of labor, and drew an absolute correlation between the postwar shortage of women's labor and the impending ruin of family farms.