Marking the occupational body: Young women and men seeking careers in agriculture

Over the last decade there has been a marked increase in the numbers of women enrolling and completing agriculturalrelated degrees in Australia. It is now timely to acknowledge the increase of female students studying on what traditionally have been male campuses and to identify gender relations occurring within student culture. Specifically this paper aims to explore how final year female and male students construct occupations in agriculture as embodied and therefore gendered and sexualised. Focus groups were held separately with Australian female and male students aged 18–30 enrolled in the final years of agriculturalrelated degrees. The aim of the focus groups was to explore women’s everyday experience at agricultural college, their expectations for work and, in turn, men’s reaction to women’s presence on campus and entry into occupations in agriculture. Findings demonstrate the centrality of corporeality in the dominant student discourses of masculinities and femininities and how these shape career pathways for women intending to enter occupations in agriculture. Within the discourses it is apparent how embodied power is acted upon and where it is resisted in constituting emerging constructions of occupations that are gendered and sexualised.