CHANGING FEMININITY - THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF WOMEN FARMERS IN NORWAY

When women enter areas of society previously occupied by men, the traditional division of labour between the sexes changes and with it what we have been used to understand as femininity and masculinity. This article shows how women farmers, who operate the heavy agricultural machinery in their daily work on the farm, construct themselves as women. They break with the traditional division of labour between men and women on farms and aspire to be as clever farmers as men, but they do not want to be masculine. They want to be respected as 'real women' in their farming community by taking care of housework and childcare, but they will not accept the patriarchal subordination of women as their mothers did. The 'new' femininity is very complex. It is constructed with bits from both new and old, from both men's and women's traditional worlds. The article shows how the pillars of the gender system, difference and hierarchy, is being reconstructed in a situation where women and men are becoming more similar.