New Rural Development Versus the Familiar Rural Motherhood: the Commercialization of Local Foods and Its Effect on Gender Roles

Abstract

In recent years, promoting local foods and local cuisine has become an essential feature of rural development projects, which aim to empower women in rural areas and generate supplementary income (from agricultural production) to small-size farming units. This study aims to discuss the ideological, cultural, social, and economic barriers that shape the ways in which rural women conduct their entrepreneurial activities based on the sale of local homemade foods. By focusing on women's daily practices in domestic and professional life and how these shape and constrain their entrepreneurship, the study aims to debate the impacts commercializing local foods has had on existing gender roles. For this purpose, a case study has been conducted on the local food markets in Seferihisar, Izmir where rural women sell homemade food products (dolmas, stuffed artichoke, pastry, sweet pastry, bread, and tomato sauce). The source data, drawn from 27 in-depth and 131 survey interviews, have been triangulated in order to develop the body of the findings. Women's entrepreneurship is argued to be able to contribute to a fairer food system, but this is based on having political programs where women participate in the decision-making process. Such factors in turn influence the process of feminizing agriculture and strengthening women as actors of rural change and the corresponding decline in the stereotypical images of rural motherhood that reinforce traditional gender roles. Within this context, the most important impact and consequence of the local markets in Seferihisar is not the visibility of local foods in the markets through women's efforts but rather women's increase visibility in the public sphere due to their producing local foods.