Abstract

Gender and identity formation is a central question in rural studies. Much of the literature has focused on gender roles in agriculture. Farming is an occupation that has continued to be shaped by differential gender relations in most of the Western world despite far-reaching changes in gender roles in the last century. It is a persistent social pattern that farmers are predominantly men. More recently, scholarship has turned to consider whether living in rural areas shapes gender identity. In this chapter, this body of work on agriculture and rural areas more generally will be reviewed.