PERTANIKA JOURNAL OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES

This paper investigates how women’s pre-farming careers affect the development of their individual activities and their empowerment. Japanese rural women used to work in agriculture under patriarchy and therefore did not have any decision-making authority. Nowadays, rural women have a variety of non-agricultural knowledge, which they acquired well before entering agriculture. It is assumed that their pre-farming careers boosted women’s empowerment such as startup women’s activity with own free will. To verify this assumption, we conducted semi-structured interviews with seven rural women entrepreneurs who had non-agricultural experiences before entering agriculture. From our results, we conclude that women’s pre-farming careers have the following two positive effects: (1) Rural women acquire decision-making right by using their savings from their pre-farming careers for the initial investment of their individual activities; (2) Any kinds of the women’s pre-farming careers − even if they are non-agricultural experiences and skills − are easy to be used in public relation, negotiation, and selling of their individual activities.