The key to historical interpretation is clearly indicated by the noun "family", which refers to a sociological-legal-religious concept that has become a kind of superstructure applied to certain forms of agricultural production.
FF is defined, by the FAO, as a form of production organized and managed from the family (Family farming is a system for organizing production in the areas of agriculture, forestry, fisheries, pastoralism and aquaculture; a system managed and implemented by a family, which is based predominantly on the work of the family, both women and men - http://www.fao.org/fileadmin/user_upload/iyff/pdf/Family_Farming_leaflet-print-it.pdf). In reality, this concept conceals more than clarifies. On the one hand, the set of activities that are complementary and necessary for the proper functioning of such a business (the care of the young and the elderly, domestic work, productive activities such as the vegetable garden, raising small animals) are not included and, on the other hand, the asymmetrical power structure is considered as an axiom, therefore not debatable.
In reality, internal power dynamics always tend to marginalize women in subordinate positions, as if it were in the natural order of things. This "natural" order, where man dominates, from which the noun androcentric, as Bourdieu reminds us, serves to legitimize a relationship of domination by inscribing it in a biological nature, is nothing but a naturalized social construction. (Bourdieu, P., Masculine Domination, Stanford University Press, 2002).
Not even where legislation provides for equal inheritance rights between male and female children, this principle is respected in practice, maintaining a patriarchal domination of capital. Authors such as Maria José Carneiro have studied the issue of pluri-activity in France, where the man leaves the farm to work elsewhere, and the woman remains in charge of the agricultural part. The study reveals how, in fact, control remains in the hands of the man, and the woman is considered, in fact, as an extension of her husband's arms (CARNEIRO, Maria José. "Esposa de agricultor na França", Revis-ta Estudos Feministas, vol. 4, no. 2, Rio de Janeiro : IFCS/UFRJ, 1996.) . The author concludes that the role of women in the productive dimension would not be the determinant for the redefinition of their position in the familia or society. What matters is the ideology that ciments the hierarchical relations between the genders (Miriam Nobre, Relaçoes de genero e agricultura familiar, published in: Publicado em Miriam Nobre, Emma Siliprandi, Sandra Quintela, Renata Menasche (Orgs.): Gênero e Agricultura Familiar. SOF, São Paulo, 1998).
Consequently, although useful, prescriptive measures to establish formal equality of rights (such as co-ownership of land), do not affect the heart of the problem. The non-recognition of the set of other activities mentioned above is not a question of "rights", but an ideological question across the conservative and "progressive" worlds which have based their reflections on FF on the sole (principal) productive dimension, calculating its productivity levels in relation to other forms of production, and then disputing the superiority of one form over the other. The "progressive" part, originating essentially from advanced sectors of the Catholic Church, could not but have as its basis the historical conception of the patriarchal family, dominated by the "pater familias" who, in this vision, had to behave with the juridical meaning of the "good father of the family". No one on this political side has ever criticized this approach. On the other hand, if we wanted to go further back in history, it would be enough to look at the example of the French Revolution, which shines for the total absence of recognition of women's rights as independent subjects.
Born within the Catholic Church, the conception of family farming as an extension of the agricultural sector (the dominant economic activity in terms of labor employed until a little over a century ago), determined its conceptual and historical limits. But if at the time it was possible to look with indulgence at this vision (even if, it should be remembered, in front of it there was a vision elaborated in the communist camp totally fanciful and out of reality that replaced the family nucleus with a communitarian concept in the name of which workers and peasants would have fought together for a better world), its historicization was never taken into consideration, perhaps because for many decades, the essential people who dedicated themselves to these themes were only males.
Thus, there has been a struggle to demonstrate the validity, if not the superiority, of FF, as opposed to large-scale agriculture, based on chemistry and genetic transformations. We also participated in this effort, and were proud of it, because it allowed the emergence of this category, the FF, as a generic political subject, which needed specific policies and programs (like PRONAF in Brazil).
In more recent years, the analysis has expanded to include ecological and environmental dimensions, bringing further evidence to support the need for specific measures dedicated to supporting these various forms of AF around the world.
But the glass ceiling of internal power dynamics remained untouched. It was only in the late 1990s that studies by female specialists on the subject began to appear and explore the issue. On the male side, there is still an underlying silence on the subject.
Where to start
The data offered by countries such as Brazil or the FAO itself, remind us that the types of farms known as FF represent the vast majority of farms in the world, and this in spite of the predictions theorized by Lenin and Kautsky. Therefore, the FFs are many and varied, combining different forms of survival and/or reproduction in time and space. The ever-increasing insertion in local and national markets, in the agro-industrial sector, and multi-activity are now considered structural characteristics of these types of agriculture.
What we continue to fail to see are the forms of family organization of production and the ideology behind it. The fact that the changing ways of entering the market and the growing pluri-activity are slowly redesigning internal power relations seems an interesting line of work, but the central point remains the difficulty, not to say the resistance, that the world of popular movements continues to oppose the opening of a serious discussion on internal power dynamics.
We repeat once again to make it clear: it is not just a matter of economically enhancing the set of reproductive and productive activities carried out by women in the company, but of changing the ideology underlying the social division of labor and its hierarchy of power.
A peasant with little land, who has to work in conditions of market domination by large conglomerates, who has to establish himself in an environment of large owners who tend to erode his plots, who has to pay increasing prices for his productive factors, this peasant represents, nowadays, the imaginary that peasant movements and "progressive" agrarian economists defend in the face of the exorbitance of the capitalist and financial world. And on this we agree.
After that, our peasant returns home, and the same logics of exploitation and oppression are exercised, consciously or unconsciously, against his spouse, whose role and political subjectivity are not recognized, becoming the outlet of the repressions accumulated during his productive activity submitted to the "stronger". The expression that was heard in our Veneto countryside when I was a child, and which summarized in a few words the hierarchy of exploitation was: "Femena, vien chi, che te doparo" (Wife, come here that I use you - for my pleasures).
So I think this is where we need to start. We can no longer continue to support struggles that concern only the emerged part of the iceberg (the exploited peasant), forgetting the base of the iceberg. Only a transformation of the social conditions of production of the dispositions that lead the dominated to perceive themselves as such can provoke a rupture of this relationship of complicity: a simple act of consciousness and will is not enough since, if this relationship of domination is continuously perpetuated, this is given by the perpetuation of the structures that produce these dispositions (Bourdieu, The Male Domination, op. cit.).
The recognition of the political subjectivity of women in agriculture is not a topic that should be left to some specialist and that's all. It must become a structural practice to be integrated into the peasant movements, in the forces that support the struggles against inequality in agriculture, including that Catholic Church that within it sees different visions fight, even very interesting ones, as I could see in the Brazilian group of the village "Agriculture and Justice" of the Pope's initiative "Economy of Francis".
Female subjugation in agriculture today is the product of a series of variables, class, race, and gender, which interact with each other not to add up, but to multiply the level of exploitation. Whether it is the spouse/partner of a small producer, a landless agricultural worker, or other similar sectors, we cannot simply fight for fairer prices, for healthier, zero-mile agriculture, while doing nothing about the basis of inequality. Carrying forward the banner of agrarian reform, content to add the principle of co-ownership for future allocations, leads nowhere, it is an old battle that will not find support in public opinion, especially among the younger generation.
The same is true in the context of customary rights that are being defended, especially but not only in Africa, to ensure that lands that have always been managed by local communities see these rights recognized in the face of the spread of land grabbing and Islamist violence. As valid as this struggle is, it carries with it a custom, created by men and for men, whereby the social hierarchy remains centered on men. Here too, merely fighting for the rights of women (often foreign brides) over the plots of land they have worked for years is no longer enough. We must go further, and strengthen the emergence of this subjectivity, individual and group, women, leading to a radical transformation of the "custom", as I tried to tell in my novel "Libambos" (https://www.elmisworld.com/libro/libambos/).
The struggle is just beginning!
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