Silent Partners: Women in Farm Magazine Success Stories, 1934–1991¹

Abstract

Abstract Women's contributions to the farm and farm household have historically been undervalued. An analysis of farm magazine “success” stories through six decades indicates that these stories may be a vehicle for reproducing and transmitting a traditional domestic ideology that separates farm production from the rest of the farm household and that rarely portrays women as significant contributors to the economic well‐being of either. Magazine stories depict women as spouses or farm helpers, but not as producers or decision‐makers. Farm magazines thus offer few models of realistic gender relations for either farm women or farm men.