In search of equality(s). The cause of women farmers in Brittany between conjugal status quo and categorical adjustment.

Summary This research examines the conditions for structuring and sustaining a separate commitment for women in Breton agricultural organizations and mobilizations. Mostly composed of women farmers in couples and located at the border between equality associations, professional sociability circles and discussion groups, women's agricultural leadership spaces offer an ideal opportunity to question not only the interweaving of professional and marital identities in the commitment but also the lability of the rhetorical uses of equality and feminism in non-mixed professional spaces. The analysis of their position in the space of agricultural representation questions the degree of autonomy of the claims made on behalf of women farmers, their influence on organizational agendas and their effect on the construction of militant careers. The study is based on a four-year observation of the formal and informal activities of women's groups, a study of their professional documentation, a census of their articles in the agricultural press, interviews with the women involved and the compilation of statistical data on women's mandates in Breton agricultural organizations since 1990. On the basis of an analysis that crosses gender studies, the sociology of activism and the sociology of agricultural professional representation, our thesis consists of demonstrating that groups and mobilizations of women farmers forge the contours of an agricultural "women's cause" under the tutelage of categorical interests and anchored to the normative ideal of gender complementarity. As receptacles of intersecting professional, organizational and marital positions, the spaces of women's engagement produce ambivalent politicizations of these multiple affiliations, which are at the same time bearers of contestation as well as reproduction of gendered hierarchies and of the social and political order.