Project documents women’s view of farm crisis

Organizers of a project at the University of Iowa are trying to document some of the unheard voices of the farm protests of the 1960s and ’80s. Karen Mason, the curator of the Iowa Women’s Archives at the U-of-I Library, says they’re interviewing 15 women who were in the thick of those hard times. She says women played an important role in the two decades of crisis, but she says most stories cover the issue from a man’s perspective. Mason says all the women being interviewed are from Iowa.Mason says it’s important to get the interviews in a permanent record, as many families didn’t keep the papers and other artifacts documenting the problems of those eras.She says they plan to create text of the interviews for everyone to read.Copies will be available at the U-of-I and at Iowa State University in Ames. Mason says they hope to complete the interviews and transcripts in the next six months. The work is being done with a grant of over seven thousand dollars from the State Historical Society.