'Geen tweede boer' : gender, landbouwmodernisering en onderwijs aan plattelandsvrouwen in Nederland, 1863-1968

Agricultural education was the only area of Dutch agricultural policies that implemented gender specific politics explicitly. Sex segregation in farm labour and family care was emphasised in the development of specific education for farm women and their daughters. This education became the crystallisation of generally not well articulated views on women's part in agricultural modernisation and in the improvement of rural life conditions. Therefore, the history of this education opens a window on Dutch agricultural policy-making from a gender perspective. The decision-making process and the discussions as well as the educational structure and curricula mirror the competitive expectations on future (agricultural) women's labour, (professional) agriculture and farm women's lives. They also show the positions and priorities of the social forces involved. This book addresses the existing diversity and the uniformalising tendencies of this process and pays special attention to the women participants' initiatives and reactions. Other important actors were located within the agricultural government, the agricultural organisations, the (rural and farm) women's organisations as well as among the teaching staff in agricultural and household education and their organisations.

The period from 1863 until 1968 represents the time between two important Dutch laws on secondary education. The first confirmed class and sex segregation but women's right of access to this level of education had been successfully claimed later. The latter was meant to stop the still existing informal class and sex segregated school career patterns.

During this period, the professional identity of the farm woman kept on being considered complementary to the farmer's and a 'second farmer' was clearly not required. A farm woman had her own agricultural tasks and was mainly responsible for the housekeeping and the family. When the first tasks seemed to becoming less important and the latter got more emphasis, this education gradually shifted into general education for rural women. Rural development became the women's social task as a complementary and supportive contribution to agricultural modernisation.