CLAIMING SPACE: WOMEN IN AGRICULTURE

For centuries women have been the backbone of food production.According to The Oxford Encyclopedia of Women in World History, women were, likely, our first cultivators. In the nomadic hunter-gatherer times, women would gather plants for food and leave the scraps and seeds, only to find the plant growing when they returned. This, in all probability, led to them purposely scattering the seeds, and so we took our first steps towards cultivated food production. In later years, after cultivation was a widespread practice, it was the men who labored in the fields for cash crops like tobacco, cotton, wheat, and corn, or in their professions. At the same time, women had the task of running the family farm, growing the vegetables and fruit to be used by the household, as well as feeding and caring for livestock.

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