And on That Farm He Had a Wife

An exploration of the historical relationship between Ontario farm women and feminism

Because men typically owned the "family farm," farm women's economic welfare depended largely on the smooth negotiation of their interconnected roles. Yet the women Halpern uncovers were surprisingly outspoken about their devaluation on the farm and about patriarchal traditions and institutions that mistreated women generally. And On That Farm He Had a Wife shows how Ontario farm wives and daughters sought to improve their lives, chiefly through the home economics movement and Women's Institutes. They committed themselves to personal development, to elevating the nature and status of their work, and to public participation in social reform designed to help others as well as themselves. All of these efforts were an expression of their social feminism, which endured even with the dramatic changes in rural life at mid-century.