ABSTRACT
This chapter considers whether the process of economic restructuring, induced by the combined effect of economic crises, neoliberal policies and globalization over the past several decades, has led to a process of feminization of agriculture. It focuses on agricultural labour markets as gendered institutions, and attempts to establish what exactly is new about women’s participation in the labour market for non-traditional agro-export production. Neoliberal agricultural policies were expected to have differential effects on different groups of agricultural producers, depending on whether they produced export crops or domestic foodstuffs, the degree of international competition that they faced and the extent to which they had previously relied on government subsidies and services. The feminization of agricultural wage employment is largely due to the fact that the growth in agricultural employment has been limited to nontraditional agro-exports, the most dynamic activity in the era of neoliberalism.
