We will discuss the challenges, inequalities and opportunities to better understand how to integrate environmental issues into agricultural practices through an inclusive perspective.

This webinar is organized as part of Chantier 7 of the Pôle bioalimentaire, on Inclusion, Social Acceptability and Combating Misinformation, under the direction of Manon Niquette.

Description :

The unsustainability of our food systems is a topical issue that now concerns the entire planet. Whether we’re talking about the excessive use of pesticides and fertilizers or the accelerated degradation of soil and groundwater, the diagnosis is the same everywhere: that of an ecological crisis that threatens the very foundations of our ways of living and farming.

While the origins of the women’s movement in agriculture did not necessarily revolve around environmental concerns, the question of the role of women in agriculture is reemerging today with the urgent need to bring ecology back into agricultural practices. By studying the role of women in changing agricultural practices and transforming work, it is indeed possible to hear different voices on how agriculture should be organized and developed.

In this conference, we will explore how the issue of women in agriculture is intimately linked to that of the environment, both in research and in practice. We will examine the implications of this articulation from the angle of the sexual division of labor. We suggest that posing it independently of this diagnosis of crisis opens up new perspectives for studying what prevents women from engaging in equitable and fair conditions, so as not to limit the role that many of them seem ready to play in the renewal of agricultural generations and the sector’s ecological transition.

Biography of Julie Francoeur, speaker :

Dr. Julie Francoeur is trained in sociology (UQAM) and regional development (UQAR). As a research associate with the Groupe de recherche sur le travail agricole (UQAM), she co-authored the report Pour mieux comprendre les inégalités entre les femmes et les hommes au sein du travail agricole, published in 2023 by the Secrétariat à la condition féminine. A contributor to the Réseau québécois en études féministes, she is also a member of the scientific sponsorship committee for the carnets de recherche Agrigenre, in France. Particularly active in the media, she is a member of the Association des communicateurs et rédacteurs de l’agroalimentaire. In spring 2023, she published Sortir du rang: la place des femmes en agriculture, with Éditions du remue-ménage.