Читать книгу Rural Women in Leadership - Lori Ann McVay - Страница 21

In a 2005 article on the relevance of rural sociology, Beaulieu listed leadership development as one of the areas of inquiry that should be addressed in order to assure that rural sociology remains relevant to the fluctuating social make-up of the rural community. This provides an intersection for this research and the broader research on women in leadership and organizations. While there are authors who have ventured into the world of women in leadership, only a very few (see especially Alston, 2003; Pini, 2003b, 2004a, 2005) have concentrated their writings on rural women. This is particularly true in rural Northern Ireland (Crawley, 2005). There is a markedly noticeable gap in the literature regarding factors that positively influence rural women’s leadership development. It is possible that this is the result of a conceptualizing of the rural community as a place where change may take place, but is not created (Bell et al., 2010). This work seeks to bring feminist sociology out of what Rosenberg and Howard (2008) have termed ‘ghettoized spaces’ (i.e. areas of sociological inquiry saturated by feminist work, to the exclusion of other areas) both by its identification of positive factors (in the form of people, events, organizations, thought processes and choices) that have helped to foster and promote women’s development of leadership skills and attainment of leadership roles; and through its focus on rural women in leadership.