Women’s daily life in rural areas started to change in the 1960s
Although women have generally been keen to move away from rural areas, they have played a central role in the daily life and development of the countryside. Rural women have significantly contributed to the building of independent Finland and its welfare state.
After WWII, the Finnish countryside was teeming with people and life. Migrants and war veteran families were starting a new life on newly established small farms, which helped maintain the rural population at a high level.
Rural women lived and worked primarily on farms, but jobs were increasingly found outside the home as well.
For example, many village centres might have branch offices from several banks, which offered jobs for the local female population.
Banking was highly regulated, and their mutual competition was mainly based on the number and location of local branches.
In farms, daily life was largely gendered. Women were usually responsible for cooking, taking care of the household and children as well as the livestock. In Finland, cows have been closely related to women’s work, since it was not until milking machines became more common in the 1960s and 1970s that men started to participate in these chores as well. In the 1950s, few farms had a milking machine, but they gradually became more common in smaller farms as well. Milk sales brought regular income to farmers.
The daily life of farmhouse women was influenced by the introduction of running water and sewer systems, which happened more slowly in the countryside than it did in urban areas. At the beginning of the 1950s, only ten percent of farms had a water pipeline for both the house and the cowshed. This kept women busy carrying water, as it often was part of their duties. The chore became a bit lighter, however, when metal buckets were replaced with lighter plastic ones.
Household appliances changed women’s life by making housework easier and more efficient
After the wars, farm livelihoods were largely based on subsistence economy and drawing on the farm’s own products, such as meat, milk, eggs, grain and berries. Foodstuffs that could not be produced by the farm itself, like coffee, sugar and salt, were bought from village shops. Gradually, the variety of purchases grew wider and new household appliances also found their way to farms. To function, however, these new devices first called for other modern innovations such as electricity and running water.
In the countryside, woodburning stoves and baking ovens were used for cooking, but electric hotplates and stoves were gradually purchased for farmhouses as well. At first, these were mainly used for making coffee and for use in summertime.
A particularly hard chore for women was laundry, so washing machines brought desired relief.
Farms were often equipped with a root cellar, but refrigerators, which became more common in Finland in the 1960s, made women’s daily life easier as they had to visit the cellar less often.
The fridge made it possible to cook several meals at the same time, instead of having to eat up everything cooked the same day. In the 1970s, farms got especially excited about freezers where the farm’s own products could be stored.
Women sustained their relationship to the countryside after moving to cities
People were moving from rural areas to towns and cities already in the 1950s, but it was not until the unprecedented migration wave from rural areas in the late 1960s and early 1970s that the urban population began to outnumber the rural population in Finland.
Young women were especially eager to move away from the countryside. They left for jobs in urban and industrial areas in Finland and also Sweden. The increase in educational opportunities since the 1960s, in particular, also offered more options for women. The intense growth and development of public sector industries such as health care from the 1950s to the 1970s offered jobs for women in different parts of the country.
For women who had grown up in farmhouses but then moved to cities for studies and work, the relationship to the countryside often remained important.
For example, food could be a major factor in maintaining this relationship. Already in their youth, women had become accustomed to producing and preparing food as well as avoiding food waste. For many people, a summer cottage formed an important link to the countryside of their childhood and youth.
In European terms, Finland urbanised relatively late, so many Finnish women have firsthand experience of daily life in the countryside. Transgenerational memories and experiences also get transmitted to future generations through mothers and grandmothers.
The writer is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of History and Ethnology, University of Jyväskylä. She is currently working on the research projects Women on Farms and My Countryside.
