There are a couple of books on the subject including:

Mary Neth, Preserving the Family Farm

Katherine Jellison, Entitled to Power

Jellison says the women only occasionally worked in the fields helping with crop production.

Neth says that the role of women in the fields was a function of income and location; but that it was not common. Women from poor families were more likely to work in the field and women living on certain types of farms (for example, wheat production or tobacco production) were more likely to work in the fields because of “unique” labor requirements for certain crops. But she did highlight several examples of women operating farms; and suggests that more research is needed.

Both books document the role of women in growing the garden and preserving the food; doing the laundry and mending the clothes, cooking and baking without benefit of electricity, bearing the children, etc., etc. which let the farm family survive to work another day. That is clearly true. But yer, the Census classified them as "unemployed".

But neither of the books addressed the role of female children in crop (and animal) production who probably contributed as mch as any boy did; or of the push by USDA and the US government to get women into the fields during WW I and II to maintain crop production.

I guess that the mother's or mother's-in-law of everyone on this site had a storybook life. Now, what is interesting is that Neth's book documents the active role of the US government in defining the appropriate roles for women (and men) in agriculture and the transfer of those beliefs into government policy across the various agencies - but particularly within USDA. I'll let everyone guess who decided on the appropriate roles for women.

Part of the impetus for change in 1900 was due to the recoginition that the work of a farm wife was much ...... much harder than was the life of a workman's wife living in town.