The quarterly of the University of Helsinki

Arja Tuusvuori

Back to summer issue 2004

At the end of the 1990s, only 22% of working women worked in primary production. The majority of rural women are classified as lower level employees and most of them work in the public service sector.

"Farmers' wives have been studied quite a lot in Finland while the other women of the countryside have not. Rural wage-earning women are clearly an important object of study," says sociologist Riitta Högbacka.

Högbacka grew up in the city and says she felt like Alice in Wonderland on her travels in the Finnish countryside, entering new areas with different dialects. It was an eye-opener for her.

As a follow-up to the questionnaire and statistical material she compiled at the University's Mikkeli unit, Högbacka interviewed 34 women living in different parts of Finland. She arranged her interviewees into 5 groups based on their lifestyles. In addition to farmers' wives, her groups are former farmers' wives, wage earners with no farm background, career women and city-leavers.

I do not want to be a servant

Of all rural women, farmers' wives are probably the most clearly definable group. They are more strongly attached to place and their role than wage earners. The ethos of a farmer's wife still includes commitment to a farm, usually the husband's home.

Most of the interviewed farmers' wives emphasised the freedom of their work, the opportunity to raise the children at home and closeness to nature.

"You get to decide yourself what you do and when. Working for someone else while raising four children might make me even more edgy than I am already," says Raija, 37.

Ulla, aged 52, describes getting used to being the wife on a cattle farm after leaving her work as a nurse. The lifestyles of a wager earner and farmer's wife were not reconciled without conflict.

"I had to give up my own occupation because there was so much work and we had the children and the cattleÉ I did feel I gave up something, my own career and my own life in a way."

"I will not accept the role of a farmer's wifeÉ a servant without her own opinions and own life."

Farmers' wives who have taken up a job and earn a wage tend to do most of the child rearing and domestic work even in periods when the husband is not busy with his own duties.

No thanks to breadmaking

The women Högbacka defined as home-oriented wage-earners, who were not from a farm, were also critical of being a conventional farmer's wife. They belittle their household, handicraft and gardening skills whereas farmers' wives are eager to talk about theirs. Nevertheless, home-oriented women believe that domestic work and child rearing are women's work.

"I've stayed here to run the house. And still my husband has made more money so that I've had to be flexible," says Iina, 38, an office-worker and the mother of two children. Iina experienced great difficulties convincing her neighbours that she did not want a baking oven in her new house.

"They were all 'oh, so you're not getting an oven'. Well, no, we're not getting an oven. I bet the gossip was that I don't even know how to bake."

"When there are problems in the relationship between a traditional farmer's wife mother-in-law and a daughter-in-law working outside the farm, the trouble is rarely the people but the conflicting lifestyles. Women without an agrarian background may have a very critical attitude to the binding role of a traditional farmer's wife whereas farmers' wives themselves emphasised the freedom of their role," Högbacka muses.

Smooth careers

Some 15% of rural wage earning women are management-level employees. Many have come to the countryside to promote their career in the public sector.

"For career-minded women living in the country is often a strategic decision. High public-sector offices are easier to get in small municipalities and one office leads to the next higher up," Högbacka explains.

Career women seem to be somewhat concerned whether their children suffered from their mother's absence when they were small. In this respect they hardly differ from their urban counterparts. A bad conscience is the constant companion of women working long hours.

What makes the life of rural career women special is their relationship to their spouse: they not only thank him for his encouragement but for his input in household work and raising the children. Many of the spouses whose wives were interviewed had taken a leave of absence or otherwise made room for the wife's career.

Rural career women do not feel they live far from everything; they use the services of nearby towns actively and consider long distances a normal part of rural life.

"When you follow a good general paper you know what's going on and when you read a lot of books you stay abreast of trends and such. I don't feel at all that I'm shut out despite living here," says Senja, 56, a director of educational and cultural affairs.

Found any rose gardens?

City-leavers include both women from urban backgrounds and those returning to the country. Many have dreamed of an idyll where children would have a better life. Often this dream has come up hard against reality; one interviewee describes her attempts to blend in in a rural village as like being pummelled with a sledgehammer.

"I had never known how much difficulty people moving to the country might experience. Finding your place takes time, encounters between different lifestyles cause misunderstanding," Högbacka says.

Some city-leavers have become a labour reserve, holding temporary jobs for a while and then being unemployed. The fragmented career of 42-year-old Tuula sounds like a summary of this era of short-term work: she has been a Finnish teacher, janitor, bakery worker, attendant at art exhibitions and kindergarten teacher. Finally, she returned to her unfinished Master's thesis.

Unlike career women, city-leavers emphasised a meaningful life and an individual lifestyle. Many have made a conscious decision to give up a career. Tuula says about her decisions:

"I can never in my life do anything I don't like doing anymore. My work has to relate to something bigger I feel is meaningful."

All women did not dream of the countryside as a hive of community spirit. Mobile phones and the TV have replaced visits with neighbours and normal socialising between villagers. But when a newcomer finds her place in a community, there is plenty of neighbourly helpfulness around.

"This is a lively village, I've been given a warm welcome and invited to all the functions and events," says the 33-year-old Minna, gratefully.

Cost-cuts hit women

Riitta Högbacka thanks the interviewed women for their candour. In fact, her urban background may have been a benefit.

"They didn't expect me to know about anything, I could ask stupid questions and they would answer freely. They didn't shy away from even hard topics and many conflicts related to lifestyles were strongly present in the interviews. The women are active people and their self-analyses were insightful."

Municipal cost cutting has hit rural women hard, especially those with little education. In addition to a decrease in public sector jobs, the discontinuation of schools is a big problem. With uninhabited farms, there is less opportunity for activities and meeting other people.

"Career women did not have this problem because they went to towns and cities for their activities. It seems that certain privileged groups can exploit the best the countryside can offer while others, with greater affinity to their surroundings suffer from feeling left out. Especially older former farmers' wives felt bad about dying villages and people moving away."

Riitta Högbacka: Rural women's changing modes of life. 316 p. SKS Helsinki 2003. ISBN 951-746-553-x.