Читать книгу Rural Women in Leadership - Lori Ann McVay - Страница 12

The concept of a rural space has been defined in many and various ways. In seeking to avoid a loss of meaning of the concept of ‘rural’ altogether – and thereby a loss of place from which to speak in an active voice (Bell et al., 2010) – rural sociologists are faced with quandaries similar to the ones (noted in Section 1.1 above) faced by feminist scholars in their use of the term ‘woman’. While the rural community has come to be seen as a multi-faceted social construct with values defined by those who live there (Cloke and Milbourne, 1992), Bock (2006) observes that definitions of ‘rural’ are traditionally hegemonic and serve to reinforce power relations between genders. In spite of this, the popular image of rural dwellers as a close-knit, caring community persists, and expectations of finding such a ‘rural idyll’ not only draw people to rural areas to live but also serve to shape their behaviour while they live there (Little and Austin, 1996).

Rural sociology has come to look more and more to socially constructed gender identities as the source of men’s and women’s inequality (Little and Panelli, 2003). Present not only on farms, but in the broader rural community as well, is a persistent and pervasive image of women conforming to traditional gender roles (Silvasti, 2003). As an example of this, Brandth and Haugen’s (1997) analysis of issues of the Norwegian Society of Rural Women’s publication NBK-nitt from the years 1974, 1984 and 1994 reveals that, at base, the representation of women did not change. Women were safely portrayed as ‘caretakers and farm hands as well as participants in the rural community’. In similar research, Morris and Evans (2001) considered the Farmlife segment of issues of the publication Farmers’ Weekly⁴ from 1976 and 1996, and noted that the passing of two decades resulted in a shift towards business-focused articles, but that little changed in the representation of a clear division of gender roles into the male/female duality, with women’s businesses emerging as simply a commoditization of traditional household gender roles.