Loving the Land Is Not Enough: Empowering Women Landowners to Prevent Environmental Degradation

Abstract

Abstract

Research seeking to reveal women's interests and deeply held beliefs about environmental health and preventing degradation must use a holistic approach to discover the contexts within which women are able to enact their beliefs. Women farmland owners in Iowa most often do not make decisions about agricultural conservation practices on their lands for reasons revealed during institutional ethnography (IE) research. The historic omission of women's contributions to agricultural enterprises compromises pathways women might use to access services from the institution of agricultural conservation. The institution of agricultural conservation reifies social barriers and discriminates by omission of services to address land as community orientations more consistent with what women affirm as goals. The language women use to describe their goals does not match agricultural conservation program directives. Outreach efforts by the institution fail to reach women through images, language, and program design that are more favorable to commodity-driven agriculture, which requires minimal constraints on maximum production. Research that uses quantitative approaches must be informed by qualitative work that accounts for these largely invisible barriers that are so prevalent as to be considered normal within agriculture and perhaps upheld by women. Particularly difficult to reveal through quantitative research are those ideals that favor restoration and enhancement of land for the greater community, but for which women express a clear and consistent desire.