And on That Farm He Had a Wife : Ontario Farm Women and Feminism, 1900-1970

For them, home was the site of both public and private life: of pro- duction and reproduction, of farm work and housework, of farm owner and husband, of farmhands and boarders, of workers and chil- dren, and of livelihood and leisure. [...] Under the Married Women’s Property Act (1872, 1884, 1897), a farm wife (like all wives) who made no direct monetary contribution to the purchase or maintenance of marital property, regardless of her indispensable work contributions, was not legally entitled to a share of that property in the event of divorce.85 In the case of the husband’s death, a wife could legally claim only one- third of the e [...] Chapter 4 locates the feminist impulse of early home eco- nomics, and discusses its appeal for farm women as expressed by Macdonald Institute – the school of domestic science at Guelph’s Ontario Agricultural College – and the Women’s Institutes, the pre- eminent rural organization for women, and therefore a necessary and inevitable focus in the study of Ontario farm women and feminism. [...] The meaning of “farm women” is complex due to the “inter- twining of family, market, and farm work.”43 The term “farm women” may refer to women who own a farm, or to those who man- age and/or work a farm that belongs to them, their families, or some- body else.44 In Ontario, prior to 1970, however, the term farm women most often referred to the wives of farmers, although I sometimes use the term t [...] The productive labour of the farm woman included “farm enabling” work – she facilitated the sale of crops and livestock through her work meeting the basic needs of her farming husband, her labouring children, and the resident farmhands.55 She cooked and served meals, made bread, butter, cheese, cream, and sausages, and did the garden- ing, preserving, cleaning, laundry, milking, and mending.56 Fin