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Drawing on the case of women farmers, this article examines the repertoires of action and forms of mobilisation of independent women workers over five decades (1970-2010). As well as breaking down the boundaries between progressive and traditional movements constituting the women’s cause, this socio-history of the dynamics of parity and the recognition of women’s work in agriculture provides an insight into the paradoxes of demands for equality that superimpose contrasting approaches to equality. Thus, the demand for equal economic rights for men and women is a “beaded” demand of women farmers that subsumes all the phases of their mobilisation, explains the durability of “strategic alliances” with actresses of institutional feminism and testifies to the difficulty of moving away from family production logics.