ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that rural women's invisibility and a dominant masculine hegemony is supported and enhanced by agricultural and rural policy. It discusses rural policy and the lack of gender mainstreaming, noting the ways policies have historically shaped and constrained rural women's lives and their relationship to land, industry and resource control. The chapter also discusses how a primary focus on agricultural productivity and agricultural or sectoral issues overshadows a regional development or territorial approach to rural policy. It briefly acknowledges the way each stage of this growth and decline was shaped by policies with implicit gendered overtones, either through unstated expectations of a traditional farm family or overt policies that restricted women's lives. The chapter focuses on rural women's activism in more recent times as their movement into the paid workforce accelerated their call for visibility and rights. The Women's Land Army indicates the way policy that can adjust gender relations to provide greater equality.
