ABSTRACT
There is a tendency in social science and policy to represent women farmers as either passive victims (indoctrinated in some learned sense of inferiority, their contribution effaced), or as the new heroines of some (eco)feminist utopian saga in which they come to embody intimate relations with, and knowledge of, nature (Merchant 1980; Shiva 1988; Plant 1989). In either case, women farmers’ otherness is translated into something that can be made transparent, that can be valued or remedied, that can be pinned down. The experience and practices of the women farmers in this study suggest that this may be unwarranted. Whilst they at times did claim these images for themselves to construct their otherness (for example, they did talk about how being women barred them from recognition as ‘farmers’, or did draw upon their womanhood to articulate their commitment to sustainable development), they used them flexibly; they were not to be held to these positions.
