Peasant Women

Abstract

Peasants comprised the majority of the French population throughout most of the nineteenth century. The French Revolution had enshrined peasant ownership of the land, and family-based farming underpinned the economy throughout the century. Economic change eroded this model of agriculture, however, just as it undermined the urban family workshop. Small farms became less viable as market agriculture replaced subsistence farming. The development of market agriculture in the north of France was supported by the agricultural labour of landless peasants, just as cheap labour by workers supported economic development in the towns. Women were an important part of the agricultural labour force, both as peasant farmers and as agricultural labourers. As men departed for work in the towns in the nineteenth century, women’s role in agriculture increased. They comprised 30 per cent of the agricultural labour force in 1854, but nearly 40 per cent in 1911.¹