Need help.

A local family is in the process of donating a color 16mm film reel to the Iowa State University Library's Special Collections. This reel, recorded by an amateur photographer from Webster City, IA during 1941, includes typical farm activities over a growing season.

It is unique because: 1) it is early color footage covering everything from planting oats to harvesting corn, 2) the individual film segments are long enough that they could be edited and repurposed, and 3) it shows girls doing several of the physical activities involved in crop production (and they clearly knew what they were doing). 

Five of the first 6 children in this family were female and 4 of the 5 girls did all of the things that are typically ascribed to males. It was a simple matter of survival; and it was the labor of the first three sisters that started the process of lifting the family out of abject poverty. These girls received no “community support” because they were doing things that were not acceptable (at least by USDA's standards) for girls to do – which makes it more unusual.

Have identified another woman  where the first 6 of 9 children were girls; and 5 of those 6 did everything that boys would do – harness the horses, drive the teams on equipment, rogue the crops, slop the hogs, milk the cows, pitch/scoop the manure, cut the firewood, dig the rocks, build the fence, hand pick the corn.  etc.

Statistically, we know that 10% of farm families with 3 or more children would have started off with 3 girls. That suggests that girls working the fields and caring for the animals was not unusual – just not discussed - to this day.

A definitive book on women in agriculture from ~ 1900 to ~ 1940 says that women only occasionally worked in the field and the barns doing the jobs historically ascribed to men.

Am looking for information (diaries, family history, pictures, books, etc.) that can shed light on this aspect of women in agriculture.

I believe that it is a story worth telling because it defines a different perspective on agriculture from what the books teach and society believes.  At one level, it is no different that the role undertaken by women during homesteading, during the Civil War, etc. – but generally ignored by today’s male dominated agriculture. But seeing is believing - by women/girls and men/boys alike – and it has lessons for women today. The film clips provide the seeing.

It could make an interesting thread here but feel free to e-mail me at [email protected]. TIA.