Performing Gender and Rurality in Swedish Farm Tourism

Abstract

The diversification of farming towards more service-intensive businesses enables innovation and competitiveness within the farming sector. However, running a hospitality and tourism business significantly differs from farming and requires different competencies. It entails face-to-face customer relationships and creating experiences based on the identity of the place and the entrepreneurs. By inviting in guests/customers, the farm is transformed from primarily an agricultural production place to one that produces experiences and services. This paper aims to analyse and discuss how women engaged in farm tourism perform rural and gender identities by producing experiences and services, and how these performances may reproduce or challenge traditional rural and gender identities. The study is based on interviews with women in the two regions Dalarna and Uppland who run tourism businesses on working farms. The interviews show that the entrepreneurs must cope with tensions and conflicts between agricultural production and tourism at the farms in terms of not only practical work and duties, but also how gendered farming identities are performed.

Key Words:

• farm tourism
• gender identities
• rurality
• performance

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank Stiftelsen Svensk Lantbruksforskning, SLF, for financial support.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.