Iowa History Book Club

“On Behalf of the Family Farm: Iowa Women’s Farm Activism since 1945” by Jenny Barker-Devine
Hosted by Andrew Klumpp with author Jenny Barker-Devine from Illinois College

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When technology, depopulation, and rapid economic changes dramatically altered rural life over the last 80 years, Midwestern women met these challenges with their own feminine vision of farm life. This book spotlights four national farm organizations in Iowa – the Farm Bureau, the Farmers Union, the National Farm Organization and a group called the Porkettes – to show how an agrarian strain of feminism offered an alternative to, but not necessarily a rejection of, broader themes of second-wave feminism across the country. In a time when farm women had to find new ways to preserve and improve their way of life, many asserted their roles as agricultural producers and combined cherished rural traditions with female empowerment, cooperation and collaboration.