As
formulated by Sachs (1996: 16): “Although women do the majority of work in agriculture at the
global level, elder men, for the most part, still own the land, control women’s labor, and make
agricultural decisions in patriarchal social systems.” It has also been pointed out that agrarian
ideology and discourses have produced romanticized narratives of rural life that legitimate the
subordination of women (Fink, 1992; Sachs, 1996; Little and Austin, 1996).