Women and Agriculture: Retrospect and Prospect

婦女與農業：回顧與前瞻

杜素豪(Su-Hao Tu)

《農業推廣學報》 11期 (1994/12) Pp. 141-175

https://doi.org/10.29788/RAES.199412.0007

摘要

因應臺灣鄉村工業化及整體經濟的發展，農業的勞動力結構已產生了顯著的轉變，農業生產的女性化便是此轉變中的重要特色之一。女性勞動力的投入對農業產銷的重要性日增，農家婦女在農場經營上扮演了舉足輕重的地位（羅明哲，1990a：13－16；1990b：33－35；鄭宜仲，1992：67－68）。然而，這些婦女對農業生產實質的貢獻往往被埋沒於官方的統計資料、農業推廣教育、政策規劃及實證研究之中。為了使這些婦女（本文稱之為“農婦婦女”）對農業的貢獻透明化，深入探討她們在農業生產過程中的實質角色及其面臨的問題於是成為不可或缺的任務。在臺灣，純粹以農場婦女為主體的討論多偏重於人口及個體經濟學觀點的分析，這些分析仍無法對婦女在農業生產上之地位作一理論上概念性的清楚界定（林瑞碧1979；華嚴1979；陳麗娟1984；李朝賢1988；羅明哲1990a，1990b；孫智嫻1991）。為了避免此種問題，整合人文社會層面的分析是必要的。然而，在人文社會科學領域中針對農場婦女的研究尚待加強，更遑論相關理論之探討（劉清榕1976；Gallin 1984，1988；呂玫瑷1988）。是故，本文嘗試從各種理論觀點對國內外有關農場婦女之研究及論著作一綜合性的回顧。透過對每一理論觀點在概念上及分析架構上逐一的批判，希望提出未來研究上可行的方向與整合的理論基礎。本文的主要評論圍繞在四種理論探究途徑（Theoretical Approach）。女性邊際化觀點（Female Marginalization Perspective）主張婦女的農業生產貢獻會因有利於男性操作的現代技術引進而降低。新古典經濟學觀點（Neo-Classic Economy Perspective）著重在爭取整個農家生計的維持，農家提供的婦女勞動力因而淪於理所當然的默默耕耘者。在政治經濟學觀點（Political Economy Perspetive）裡，強調資本累積與剩餘價值的結果，女性勞力變成了被剝削而廉價的農業生產投入因素。新進的女性主義觀點（Feminist Perspective）致力於將兩性關係（Gender Relation）的基本概念應用在澄清並突顯農場婦女在家庭農業生產過程中的地位。由於這個觀點較能真正陳述婦女身為農場工作者的處境，是個較具前瞻性的理論研究途徑。

並列摘要

Agricultural labor structure has been in rapid transition in response to rural industrialization and economic development in Taiwan. The feminization of agricultural production is getting prevalent in this transition. As the importance of female labor rises, women play a crucial role in family farming (Lo 1990a: 13-16 and 1990b: 33-35; Cheng 1992: 67-68). However, women's actual contributions to agriculture is seldom visualized by public statistics, agricultural extension, policy planning and development and research work. To avoid this bias, deep work on researching farm women's roles in agricultural production is needed.The discussion of farm women in Taiwan has mostly centered around demographic and micro-economic approaches which fail to clearly conceptualize women's role in farming in one way or another (Lin 1979; Hua 1979; Chen 1984; Li 1988; Lo 1990a, 1990b; Sun 1991). In this regard, human sociological approach is recognized to be important (Liu 1976; Gallin 1984, 1988; Lu 1988). Furthermore, the development of theory relevant to farm women remains unexplored. As such, this paper is to synthetically review previous research on farm women from various theoretical perspectives and further to suggest sociological theory basis for the study of farm women in the future.The critique is organized around four approaches theorizing gender roles in agriculture. Female Marginalization Perspective addresses women's contributions to agriculture declines with the introduction of new agricultural technology which favors men. Neo-Classic Economy Perspective which emphasizes the necessity to sustain the survival of farm family, tends to take women as an important but invisible farm labor for granted. Political Economy Perspective pays attention to the suer-exploitation of female labor in the farm household in the interest of capital accumulation and the increase of surplus value. Feminist Perspective introduces the concept of gender relation into the conceptual reconstruction of ”family based production”. With this reconstruction, this approach is expected to be able to make much more sense of women's lives as family workers.