Value-added agriculture: a context for the empowerment of French women farmers?

While women’s contributions to French agriculture are increasingly recognized, less clear is whether increasing visibility translates into empowerment opportunities. Using qualitative data drawn from interviews with French value-added farmers with diverse life experiences and trajectories, we examine how women have been able to achieve empowerment and the ways in which value-added agriculture specifically fosters an empowering context. We adopt a conceptualization of empowerment from the development scholarship in order to establish a baseline for scrutiny, viewing empowerment as a multidimensional process constituting the “power to” realize one’s goals, the opportunity to exercise “power with” others and the ability to find and nurture “power within” the self. The findings of this study indicate that through the performance of value-added agriculture, women were able to engage in the process of empowerment. They were able to exercise authority in the daily management of their farm operation, explore and define their own methods of work, to express creativity, satisfy needs for social ties and build a professional identity. However, our results also suggest the persistence of patriarchal and agrarian ideology, undermining the empowerment process. We conclude by discussing the context of empowerment which might mediate this experience for women farmers.