Who lives in the countryside? Reflections on residence, gender and work in Santa Fe

Abstract

The province of Santa Fe -Argentina- integrates an extensive plain with different agro-ecological, demographic and socio-economic conditions, configuring three regions: north, centre and south. The Second Green Revolution modified the productive and social space. In this article, continuing with lines of research on the changes in the agrarian social structure of Santa Fe, we will construct an image of the population that lives and works in the rural space of Santa Fe. The methodological approach incorporates a gender perspective to analyse data from the 2002 and 2018 National Agricultural Censuses in dialogue with qualitative sources -life histories of workers and in-depth interviews with qualified informants and members of farming families-. The data on residence, gender and work from the CNAs are insufficient and difficult to compare between intervals since they were taken in a non-homogeneous manner over time. The information obtained consolidates the image of an increasingly entrepreneurial agricultural sector, with a greater weight of male wage labour and a deepening of capitalist relations in Santa Fe agriculture to the detriment of other forms of production.