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A-8/15 When Farm Couples Break Up: Gendered Moralities, Gossip and the Fear of Stigmatisation in Rural Communities

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Summary

This article draws on interviews with farm women and men who have experienced a family break up to analyse their experiences of gender expectations in family farming, their fear of stigmatisation and their receipt of help from the rural community. The interviews illustrate their compliance with dominant constructions of rural gendered moralities. Men struggled to live up to the ideals of rural masculinity, which centre on hard work, self-sufficiency and mental strength. Women, who were strongly influenced by the moral norms of rural womanhood, managed to retain their feminine dignity as being caring and considerate of the family. Rural communities are often characterised as nurturing close relationships, but also as being pervaded by social control and gossip. Both women and men interpreted their break up as a private matter and deliberately avoided disclosing their relationship problems in order to protect themselves and their families from gossip, which made it difficult for them to seek and receive help from the rural community. While some of the hardships are recognisable for any divorced couple, the article is concerned with the rural farm particularities of the divorce situation. Sociologia Ruralis. DOI: 10.1111/soru.12065

A-9/15 Farm, family, and myself: farm women dealing with family break-up

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Summary

Despite the rising divorce rate among farm families in Norway, surprisingly little research has examined these break-ups. Drawing on interviews with farm women whose marital or cohabiting relationships broke down, we explore the contradictions between individualization and the moral responsibility embedded in the patriarchal discourse of the family farm. We ask whether farm family dissolution represents a break with patriarchal ideology and practice, and thus threatens the survival of the family farm. A key finding is the struggle to balance establishing new lives for themselves with meeting their felt obligations to the farm. None of the women exercised their full legal rights if they worried that it might destroy the farm business. By ensuring the survival of the farm and the well-being of their children, the women's handling of divorce conforms to cultural conventions and protects the family farm. Gender, Place and Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography, vol. 22 (1) 37-49

A-1/15 Gender quotas for agricultural boards: changing constructions of gender?

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Summary

This article explores the processes by which gender is given meaning through social interaction in boardrooms. In Norway, alongside mandatory quotas regulating the composition of Public Limited Company boards, voluntary quotas were designed to increase women's membership on the boards of agricultural co-operatives. This radical step to secure a minimum of 40 per cent women makes these boards an interesting site for investigating the construction of gender in a traditionally male-dominated organization. In the debate, arguments in favour of a quota accentuated diversity and differences between women's and men's competences, opinions and values. The analysis of interview data from the boards of four agricultural co-operatives suggests that equal representation is a muted, taken-for-granted value. Equality and diversity are not understood as incompatible ideas, and gender is produced dynamically through practice rather than constituted as an inherent, fixed attribute. Gender as difference is less pervasive than expected as women tend to be recognized as belonging to the gender-neutral category of a board representative despite any recognized differences. The study demonstrates that voluntary quotas may change the context and both challenge old assumptions and promote new understandings of gender in local situations. Gender, Work and Organization 22:6 (2015) 614-628

A-6/14 Embodying the rural idyll in farm tourist hosting

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Summary

This article is concerned with service work conducted on farms, and it explores how men and women's bodies are involved in producing and mediating positive aspects of the rural. The main question is whether the two types of work, farming and tourist hosting, are represented by compatible or conflicting bodies. The analysis is based on interviews with couples from 20 farms. Findings show that farm heritage and culture is central to the farm tourist product, and that dress and appearance, as signifiers of both a farming lifestyle and professional tourist hosting, hold fewer tensions than could be expected from the taken-for-granted difference between the two types of work. Relations between hosts and guests in the different spaces of nature and the home disclose gendered challenges. Men need to incorporate caring aspects in their wilderness activities. Women struggle to balance their own needs and emotions with tourists' expectations – as the personal and the home are commercialised as part of the rural idyll. Interestingly, as service work expands into the agricultural sector, our findings indicate that these two different types of work may gradually lose their distinct embodied differences. Scandinavian Journal of Hospitality and Tourism, Vol. 14, No. 2, 101 – 115

A-1/12 Gårdsturisme på hjemmesider: Trender, blikk og paradokser

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Summary

Denne studien undersøker hjemmesidene til naturbaserte gårdsturismevirksomheter, og hvordan gårdenes selvpresentasjon møter nye turismetrender. Dagens trender er preget av et «romantisk» fremfor et «masseturisme»-blikk, ifølge begrepene til Urry (2002). Gårdsturisme tilbyr produkter og opplevelser som oppfyller disse ønskene, og selger det autentiske, tradisjonelle og særegne. Tre paradokser kommer til uttrykk på hjemmesidene. Ved å analysere dem, diskuterer vi hvordan det er vanskelig å unngå å iscenesette det ekte i turismesammenheng, at det er vanskelig å markedsføre det tradisjonelle uten å koble det til moderne verdier og komfort, og at det unike gjennomgår standardiseringsprosesser. Sosiologisk tidsskrift, 20(1):27-47

A-35/12 Farm tourism and dilemmas of commercial activity in the home

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Summary

This article aims to analyse the overlap between work and home in farm tourism.When farmers diversify their production into tourism using their homes as a commercial arena for hosting visitors, new challenges regarding boundaries between private and public, home and work arise. The article shows how central aspects of hosting involve inherent dilemmas between the farm as a home and as a site of commercial activities. Moreover, it shows how the boundaries between work and home are managed in order to balance business and a sense of home. Such boundary work consists of attempts at adjusting the product, marking rules and creating separate spaces for home and work, something that produces a more conditional hospitality. The analysis is based on studies of twenty family farms from various districts in Norway. Some of the farms combine tourism and farming while others have altered their production to tourism only. The material includes formal interviews with sixteen women and nineteen men operating the businesses. Hospitality & Society 2(2):179-196