Rural women entrepreneurs in the agri-food industry and public policies: occupational segregation in vulnerable territories

Abstract

The article analyzes the public policies aimed at activating women's entrepreneurship in the globalized agri-food industry in the Albacete Integrated Territorial Investment zones. The analysis, with a gender perspective, shows their influence on occupational segregation: at global level, promoting interdependent activities to the territories with the feminized auxiliary agri-food industry; and, at local level, crystallizing precarious, alternative economic activities, where the global chain of care and social action of rural women sustains the community.

With an eminently qualitative methodological triangulation, the voices of women entrepreneurs and small businesswomen are collected, highlighting, for example, the dissonance between the official discourse and theirs. Cultural, social and economic capital constructs irruptive labor imaginaries in the community, showing the (im)balance of the labor market and economic activity based on patriarchal and class conceptions.