Читать книгу Rural Women in Leadership - Lori Ann McVay - Страница 14

With the current economic upheaval in rural areas of many Western countries, numerous changes are taking place (Little and Panelli, 2003). Rural development policies have played an important role in these changes by serving to make farmers a minority in many rural areas (Saugeres, 2002). As farm wives move into off-farm work in increasing numbers, in order to support their husband’s role as farmer, the effect on gender identities, roles and relations is evident (Shortall, 2002), but as the literature reveals, systems of subordination remain dominant and are compounded by the prevalence of ‘masculinist approaches’ to rural development policies (Bock and de Haan, 2004). Nevertheless, rural and farm women are far from powerless, as has been shown particularly in their successes as agents of rural development – in spite of opposition (Bock, 2004).

As with broader women’s studies literature, the study of women and farming reveals the presence of a debate around women, society and nature (biology), which has led to claims that the association of rural women with nature has perpetuated male domination by reducing women to simply another feature of the landscape in need of male control (Little and Panelli, 2003). In fact, Brandth (2002), in a review of literature on gender identity in European family farming, noted that the research she reviewed clearly displayed the presence of a hegemonic discourse. The source of this discourse has been explored in varying ways, leading Delphy (1984) to write that farm women’s relations rather than their actual work lie at the root of their exploitation as workers. Morris and Evans (2001) discuss ways in which hegemonic discourse is perpetuated by farm media. Shortall (1999) identifies the ownership of property as the fundamental issue. Silvasti (2003) notes the key role parents play in shaping children’s attitudes towards the traditional rural way of life. Additionally, Heather et al. (2005) identify women as one key source of their own subordination, as they exercise agency in reproducing the very systems that oppress them – a concept supported by Bock’s (2004b) assertion that farm women who took on entrepreneurial ventures would only continue to pursue those ventures if certain they would not interfere with their family and farm commitments.

Recent publications show that the majority of women on farms are still expected to be supportive of their husbands’ occupation in any way necessary – even at the expense of their health – while at the same time being portrayed as in need of a man’s protection (Bock, 2006). Kelly and Shortall (2002) describe how women contribute to this discourse through positioning their off-farm work as a ‘family household decision’ (p. 336), and viewing it as a means of ensuring their husbands’ mental health. Likewise, O’Hara (1994) purports that women’s work on farms is shaped through a series of negotiations that they make as to their priorities in relationship with the farm. Farmar-Bowers (2010) conceptualizes these negotiations as resulting from a sense of both personal responsibility to the family and the obligation to instil responsibility to the family in the next generation. Heather et al. (2005) attribute this dynamic to the deep integration of hegemonic discourses into the relationships between farm men and women.

Studies in at least six Western countries have shown that the unequal division of labour between men and women on farms is grounded in socially accepted definitions of masculinity and femininity (Bock, 2006). Morris and Evans (2001) claim that representations of masculinity and femininity that they studied in agricultural media echo this by showing a maintained gender division of labour even when women were central to, or equal partners in, business activities. This persistence in gender divisions of labour on farms has been influenced by the view of women’s bodies and work as ‘secondary’ and inferior to men’s (Saugeres, 2002), since it is done in the privacy of the home and is not as physical as men’s work (Brandth, 2002). Women’s work is thus made trivial unless it is done in direct support of men and their households (Little and Austin, 1996).

In fact, women’s biological makeup is seen as not only a hindrance to their ability to complete the same on-farm tasks as men, but as an actual handicap that women may only attempt to overcome (for example, by becoming women farmers) at the expense of losing their femininity (Saugeres, 2002). In response, young women may turn to ‘explicit and conscious performances of their femininity and feminine bodily appearance’ at other times (Bock, 2006) in order to avoid being seen as inappropriate and therefore rejected by the rural community (Little and Austin, 1996). Just as the broader women’s studies literature showed that job requirements might change with gender, so qualities of a good farmer may be rejected as bad when they are displayed by a woman (Saugeres, 2002).

In spite of the rise in women’s off-farm work over the past several years, Kelly and Shortall (2002) found that women’s household work and on-farm responsibilities have changed very little. Bennett (2004) confirms this in writing that patriarchy is alive and well on the family farm, with women still expected to handle the majority of domestic responsibilities. And even as Brandth (2002) discusses the possibility that women’s off-farm work provides them with a framework from which to be seen as active in making choices that take them away from their subordinate position as invisible workers on the farm, she also consents that hegemony can still be maintained in the face of such changes. It is interesting to note, however, that rural and farm women are not always pleased to be re-enacting established patterns of gender relations. In Silvasti’s (2003) study, she described the family farm as an ‘ideological battlefield’ on which traditional gender relations face the changes taking place in society at large (p. 162). It is important to keep these difficult intersections and experiences of hegemonic tendencies in mind as we now turn to the literature regarding organizations, setting the stage for a discussion of how gender and organizational issues affect women’s attainment of leadership positions.