Women and the Agricultural Revolution Essay -- essays papers

Women and the Agricultural Revolution Elise Boulding in her article, Women and the Agricultural Revolution, argues that women played a key role in initiating the Agricultural Revolution. She defines the revolution as happening within two stages: horticulture and agriculture proper. Women had a prominent role within the earlier form, horticulture. Horticulture is defined as farming for subsistence only.Women’s roles on the farm were not as dominant as society grew to farming for surplus instead. Boulding begins the article by discussing the shift society made from wandering nomads to settled villagers. She explains that it was women who recognized that plants could be easily domesticated. It was because of the domestication of plants that people decided to eventually settle down. In doing so, the early settlers exchanged the fairly simplistic nomadic life to that of a hard-working farmer. Throughout the essay, Boulding emphasizes the role women played in initiating this revolutionary shift. She describes the main duties women had and the status they held within a horticulture society. However, this changed as the purpose of farming shifted to agriculture proper. According to Boulding, women’s influence on the Agricultural Revolution began very early on. Women had recognized the significance of einkorn, a nutritious plant that was easy to cultivate. It was because of women recognizing that plants could be domesticated that nomads were introduced to farming....