„Wir sind Bäuerinnen!“

“We are female farmers!” Emancipatory adult education with women in agriculture
The women’s working group of the Austrian Mountain and Small Farmers’ Association (ÖBV-Via Campesina Austria) has provided emancipatory education to women in agriculture for several years. This education is inspired “from below” by Paolo Freire’s “Pedagogy of the Oppressed.” As the people concerned and experts on their situation, female farmers work with an educational coordinator to develop solutions to their problems with the goal of participating equally in family, career and society. This process occurs along an iterative “educational spiral”: Distance from everyday life makes it possible to see connections and develop new perspectives. Women who give each other strength and in doing so discover resources can organize themselves and show solidarity with one another, which provides the basis for collective processes of change. The work with ÖBV women is a struggle to understand, make visible and put into practice the requests and ideas of small farmers and mountain farmers, but it also means a struggle for resources because farmers’ time is scarce and the funding of such educational courses is notoriously precarious. (Ed.)