ABSTRACT
Since many farm families rely on the off-farm wages of women, policy changes originating with the women's movement and the scholarship it has encouraged certainly are important to farm women. The focus on women and farming at the Second National Conference on American Farm Women in Historical Perspective clarified women's relation to factors of agricultural production and refined our understanding of women's roles in farm families and rural communities. While thus far the authors have emphasized the contributions this anthology can make to agricultural policy development and rural social change, they certainly feel it is equally germane to agricultural scholarship. This scholarship begins to challenge the presumed harmony between farm and family goals and between farm and farm women's goals, the assumed complementarity in men's and women's roles, and the lack of competition between farm men and women for control of income and decision making.
