'His footmarks on her shoulders': The place of women within poultry keeping in the British countryside, c.1880 to c.1980

The exact nature and extent of women's involvement in agriculture, at all levels, but especially on family farms, has remained largely hidden in the numerical data relating to the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This is especially true of a quintessentially female activity, poultry keeping. To focus entirely on the large-scale intensive producer, and adhere to the narrative of change laid down by the industry, is to obscure the continuities that have existed and still exist within that industry. Specialist publications and the farming press, ranging from the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries through to the late 1970s, are therefore used to assess the possible shifts in the long-standing association between women and poultry keeping. It is suggested that this association was strong enough for women's involvement to continue at all levels into the post-war period, if not beyond. It appears that women remained involved as producers, as well as labourers, especially on smaller-scale and within family-run enterprises, which themselves survived longer than we might expect.