Two particular groups, women and the salaried worker, have been almost totally absent from the activities of most agricultural organisations. Yet their role in the process of agricultural change has been of enormous significance. The salaried worker has been particularly important in certain farming regions but his or her status and position in the community has rarely been fully recognised by the major farming groups. Equally the role of women has been central to French agricultural development, both for the multiplicity of economic tasks they have performed and for the part they have played in such issues as the rural exodus and economic change. It is worth reiterating the fact that the favoured farming unit of the early 1960s, the two-labour-units farm enshrined in the legislation and characterised as units of male labour, required as much input from the female as the male member of the farming family.

Salaried labour in French farming

The place of salaried workers in French farming constitutes something of an enigma. A vital and numerically important part of the agricultural community in the middle of the nineteenth century, they increasingly disappeared from view as statisticians and commentators sought to emphasise the emergence of a peasant France for political and social reasons. Yet, as Table 9.1 shows, salaried workers played, and continue to play, a not inconsiderable role in French farming despite the powerful image of a nation anchored to the family farm employing primarily family labour.