Author(s):
Katarina Pettersson* - Nordregio
Susanna Heldt Cassel* -
Abstract:
A diminishing number of farming families in the 'Western world' can live solely on farming. Alternative strategies have therefore been necessary by developing 'side-activities'. The on-farm entrepreneurial activities are often performed within tourism, hospitality and local food production, and many of these farm tourism entrepreneurs are women. Diversification of farming activities and the introduction of tourism entrepreneurship may challenge established gender relations within the local community, in the family and on the farm and gendered identities are possibly transformed. We investigate diversification though a perspective on entrepreneurship, which is an activity linking people and places through networks of social relations in place, which influence how entrepreneurial processes affect and are affected by place. Women's entrepreneurship thus has, the potential to change places through transforming women's identities and consequently material and discursive aspects of places where they live. The purpose of this paper is to present some preliminary results on how place-based gendered discourses and gender relations affect, and are influenced, by women's farm based tourism entrepreneurship in Sweden. We focus on two regions and our main empirical material consist of 20 in-depth interviews with women on-farm tourism entrepreneurs. Our conclusions indicate that women's on-farm tourism entrepreneurship change the places and the gender relations were it is situated, and also the women's identities.
