Photovoice and community development: women in agriculture and the transformation of rural spaces

We share our process and reflections using photovoice as a feminist methodological tool in collaboration with women agricultural entrepreneurs in Colima, Mexico and women farmland owners in Iowa, United States. Photovoice, a... [ view full abstract ]

We share our process and reflections using photovoice as a feminist methodological tool in collaboration with women agricultural entrepreneurs in Colima, Mexico and women farmland owners in Iowa, United States. Photovoice, a participatory research method, offers one approach to challenging dominant epistemologies about gendered expectations in rural and agricultural spaces. In both projects, participants used the photovoice process—the project meetings as well as the photographs and stories themselves—to share their sense of identity and sense of place as landowners and business owners in agricultural communities. Women agricultural entrepreneurs in Colima shared through pictures their daily lives in search of identifying successes and challenges to show public policies decision-makers what changes are necessary to be successful in the field. The objective of this project was twofold, to encourage the participation of young women in agroindustrial projects, through visualizing successful entrepreneurs, as well as promoting a dialogue about the results with public officials. Women farmland owners in Iowa created a traveling community exhibit entitled “River Stories: Views from a Watershed,” sharing the challenges and opportunities they experienced in their struggle to be stewards of their land in a time when agricultural commodity production increasingly threatens biodiversity, soil health, water quality, and public health. We analyze how the project collaborators used photovoice to create space for reflection, identification, and empowerment across differing individual, familial, professional, national, and cultural identities and spaces. Through the process of sharing with the public their own private experiences with agricultural identity, each participant engages creating shifts in the symbolic landscape of how we define and understand gender in agricultural and rural spaces. In addition, we analyze our own positionalities as feminist sociologists engaged in participatory, gender-based research in Mexico and the United States.