{"word_count": 649, "character_count": 3675}
&#160;No one of us specifically worked on the feminization of the veterinary profession. However, in our research on food safety in slaughterhouses (Laure) and on antimicrobial use in livestock (Nicolas), we met female veterinarians who talked with us, yet sometime briefly, about their careers. To illustrate our former note, we have decided to present short extracts of these interviews in which those women speak about their personal and professional trajectories.We go on with our series with the narratives of two women who have been confronted with important farming transformations in the region where they work. The first one decided to turn her rural practice into a mixed one, while the second one stopped to work as an independent vet. This evolution, which led for these women to the renunciation of the career they had chosen in the first place, is addressed by Muriel Surdez article (2009).&#160;“I am born in a rural area, in Haute-Loire. I wanted to do this job because I was in contact with a rural veterinarian. It was great to me. Moreover my grand-parents were peasants, so staying in this rural world and getting involved in the peasant world looked perfect to me. I wanted to get a job in the rural world, with the wish to be free, so independent profession, and the wish to help farmers. As I regularly say for joking, I have looked after cows before having taking care of them! So I studied at the veterinary school and I set up in the region in 1975. (…) Even though I was a woman and at this time we were very few. But I settled here. (…) I started to work in the cattle sector. My idea was to work only with farm animals but finally I almost always worked in mixed practice, so farm animals and small animals, with variable proportions. And these proportions have been determined by my enthusiasm for companion animals and by the farming transformations that led in our region to the disappearance of many small farms.And did you continue to work with the big farms? Did it change your practice?Oh yes, it is not the same thing at all. Big farms are more technical and we have also trained farmers more and more. So this is not the same needs at all. I used to work alone for about ten years. But my husband was working 15 km away and I always say that he annexed me! So I set up into partnership with him and I am still working in his practice, still in mixed practice”.&#160;Graduated in 1975. Married to a veterinarian who works in rural practice.&#160;When I graduated from Alfort veterinary school, I first oriented in research and I got a degree in veterinary pharmacology, with an internship at the Centre d’Energie Atomique [Research Center for Atomic Energy] and I wanted to become a researcher. I took me two years, but in the meantime I was working in a small animal clinic near Paris. So when I graduated from the veterinary school and when I was continuing my studies, I was working in a clinic. Then I got married and my husband was working as a vet here [rural area]. So I worked with him in a mixed practice, as an employee. Then it was a complete transformation of the practice and, moreover, a huge economic change because in this region animal farming disappeared very quickly, in just a few years… So I was doing small animal medicine in a mixed practice in a rural area, but the practice have had to completely change as well, as there was no cattle anymore in the region. This was very impressive. So I was unemployed for two years and then I started to work in slaughterhouse. And then I became an Official Veterinarian.&#160;Graduated in 1978. Work in small animal practice, then mixed, then became an Official Veterinarian.