Gender economics in action: Rural women's economic citizenship in Finland during the twentieth century

This article addresses a central puzzle in the history of rural women: Why have women on family farms, despite their equal partnership in production a nd conduct of arming business, fallen short of 'economic citizenship'? By m eans of a unique data set, this study demonstrates that on Finnish family f arms between the 1920s and 1950s, women worked longer hours than men. At th e same time, and concurrently with mechanization and commercialization of p roduction, social and cultural notions of women's work were primarily reduc ed to dealing with reproductive work and consumption rather than production . In the eyes of census takers and economists, women's agricultural work wa s rendered invisible and their household work devalued. Farm women, subsequ ently, were not considered to be part of the economic sphere that laid the groundwork for civil and social rights in the post-World War II welfare soc iety.