Constructions of Rural Women's Voluntary Work

This article examines the nature and circumstances of women's voluntary work in rural communities. Drawing on original research conducted in two villages in Avon, England, it focuses on three main themes. Firstly, it considers theoretical debates on the conceptualisation of rural women's labour, arguing that traditional divisions between public and private forms of work provide an inadequate basis for understanding either women's labour participation or their domestic lives. The notion of voluntary work as a third sphere is discussed as it relates specifically to the rural labour market and community. Secondly, the article examines voluntary work in terms of the empowerment of women. It addresses issues of women's role and status in the rural community, questioning whether the state's use or reliance on voluntary work in rural areas represents an exploitation of women's position or an opportunity for women to gain influence and power. Thirdly the article evaluates the contribution of women's voluntary work to the conceptualisation and representation of rurality. The focus here is on the way in which voluntary activity supports a particular form and image of the rural community and, in turn, the implications this has for gender divisions and women's identity in contemporary rural England.     

Rural children's perceptions of life on the land in Southwestern Ontario

What are the life experiences of farm children in rural southwestern Ontario? Within the rural sociological literature, little research has been undertaken on the geographies of Canadian children in rural settings. Play, leisure, work and future aspirations are important to their lives. However, little is known about these issues and children's use of space and place on the farm. This study focuses on these issues from the point of view of the child and examines how gender, age and socialization processes work together with agrarianism to frame the lifeworlds of these children. In general, these children do not aspire to farm in the future, but are interested in future residence in the country. They value the way of life to be found in farming but some experience loneliness on the farm. For farm children, space and farm animals act as comfort in their lives and make for unique experiences.     

'That Beijing Thing': Challenging transnational feminisms in Kampala

How does the representation of gender in the transnational 'gender and development' discourse shape lived social relationships? This article draws on research carried out in Kampala, capital of Uganda, a site of extensive development initiatives over the last 15 years. Analysing the way gender is discussed within the local print media and in a series of interviews and focus groups, the article shows how Ugandans interpret the 'gender and development' discourse as a European feminist agenda. The article demonstrates that middle-class Ugandans localise these 'transnational feminisms' by rejecting overt labels such as 'activist' or 'feminist'. Insisting that a 'Ugandan' approach to gender issues should be based on the principle of consensus rather than conflict, women and men negotiate appropriate masculinities and femininities in response.     

To Garden,to Market: Gendered meanings of work on an African urban periphery

This article traces the historical origins of a localized gender division of labor found in two villages on the edge of the city of Bobo-Dioulasso, Burkina Faso. Through social-historical analysis, this article demonstrates that gender divisions of labor are not simply constructed in particular places; they are constructs located near or far from other places, and thus influenced by multidimensional interactions between those places. Specifically, this article shows how the villages' location on the periphery of an important regional city has shaped their experience of European colonialism, religious change and market expansion in ways that have given particular meanings to certain kinds of work in commercial gardening. More generally, this article shows how a focus on the historical meanings of work can provide insights into local variations in gender divisions of labor.     

Gender mainstreaming and rural development policy; the trivialisation of rural gender issues

This paper considers gender mainstreaming of the EU Rural Development Programme. The EU promotes the gender mainstreaming of rural development policies because retaining women in rural areas is seen as crucial to the long-term viability of rural areas. A review of literature and scan of policy documents demonstrates that few rural development plans address gender issues, and generally only by including some separate projects for women. Little is done to address the systemic features of gender inequality and to realise inclusive developments that address the needs of all social groups. The de-politicisation of rural gender issues results in policy makers ticking the obligatory gender box without envisioning any real change in the agenda or process of rural development policy making. I argue that a more fruitful way to go forward is to re-politicise gender in rural development and to tease out at the local level how changing gender relations and rural development coincide.     

Farmwomen's emotional geographies of care: a view from rural Ontario

This article contributes to geographies of rural women's health by investigating farmwomen's perceptions of their caring roles and responsibilities, which are crucial to the wellbeing and sustainability of rural people and their communities. Featuring a thematic analysis of interviews and a focus group with farmwomen from Ontario, Canada, the research examines farms and farming as unique places and spaces of care. Informed by the literature on emotional geographies, the article examines how care is situated and performed through farmwomen's negotiation of multiple, overlapping identities and how these are embodied and affective in emotional work. The findings not only confirm the paramount role of women in rural care, they demonstrate the interdependence of family, community and work as central to the challenges of rural women's health. The article argues that the link between health and productivity on the farm is crucial to understanding farmwomen's caring, and highlights the paradox that their emotional work is as much about opportunities for power and resistance as it is about obligation and subordination.     

Wife Seclusion and the Spatial Praxis of Gender Ideology in Nigerian Hausaland

In much of Nigerian Hausaland the prevailing religio-cultural ideology of female seclusion (if not always the practice) impinges on married Muslim Hausa women to a greater, or lesser, degree. This article examines the intimate relationships between space, gender and ideology in contemporary rural Hausa society, showing the social construction (and connectedness) of gender identities and associated spatial identities, thus illustrating how spatial praxis is based on hegemonic patriarchal gender ideology. Observations and interview material gathered from a village case study in Kano State demonstrate how gender divisions correspond with the ideology and contemporary practice of wife seclusion. Intersecting patterns of gender, space and time are revealed by detailed analyses of time- and space-use data, which scrutinise men's and women's daily activities and mobility patterns. The cross-cutting of gender with class, age and marital status is shown to be highly significant in determining everyday experiences of spatial praxis, especially for women. A materialist feminist theoretical framework is used to explain this gendered geography of Nigerian Hausaland in which men's and women's worlds are spatially segregated, yet complexly interlocked and interdependent beyond simple public‐private divisions of ‘female’ household compounds (private space) and ‘male’ public space. For this peasant society, aspects of the rural economy and ideology emerge as powerful factors in determining the nature of seclusion as part of gender praxis. It is argued that due to various cultural and religious factors socio-economic development in Northern Nigeria has not been translated into improved autonomy for Hausa women.     

Struggling with ‘this gender relations thing’ in the Papua New Guinea Church Partnership Program

Gender equality and women's empowerment has become a cornerstone for successful development. Religious teachings and practices, like ‘traditional culture’, are often viewed as contributing to gender inequality and oppression. The increased engagement by donor agencies with religious organisations prompts questions about how religion, gender and development intersect in particular places, and the implications this intersection has for the transnational ‘gender agenda’ of development agencies. This article focuses on the dialogue about gender in the Papua New Guinea Church Partnership Program. Analysing the struggles taking place, it argues that the processes that shaped local Christianities are also at work in the churches' translations of the ‘gender agenda’. These churches are gradually emerging as agents for gender justice as they develop their own approaches to gender work that support the churches' mission to ‘live the Gospel’ in their practice of holistic integral human development. However, to progress further, in recognising the necessity for men to lead the struggle for gender justice, the dialogue must focus on the personal transformation of men in relation to their understanding of masculinities and gendered power dynamics. From this foundation, structural and political change can be advanced.     

Out of the dark but not out of the cage: women's empowerment and gender relations in the Dangme West district of Ghana

In Ghana, strategies to address poverty among rural women have often been linked to women's empowerment programmes with credit as a core component of these. Yet, many programmes focus on the economic benefit to women without necessarily looking at the impact on gender relations at the household level and its implications on women. Using quantitative and qualitative data from the Dangme West district of Ghana, this article shows how poverty reduction programmes with credit components can reduce women's vulnerability to poverty and empower them. But much more needs to be done to complement these efforts. The study shows that women beneficiaries as against women non-beneficiaries have significantly improved their socio-economic status through access to financial and non-financial resources. This has in certain instances improved gender relations at the household level, with women being recognized as earners of income and contributors to household budget. However, some women still regard their spouses as ‘heads’ and require their consent in decisions even in issues that have to do with their own personal lives. Moreover, the improved economic status of women has resulted in a ‘power conflict’, creating confrontation between spouses. The article recommends that, as part of their programmes, assisting organizations and institutions must address ‘power relations’, the basis of gender subordination at the household level, otherwise socio-cultural norms and practices, underpinned by patriarchal structures, will remain ‘cages’ for rural women.     

The New Men's History and the Peculiar Absence of Gendered Power: Some Remedies from Early American Gender History

Historians with feminist commitments have expressed reservations about men's history and men's studies. This unease has existed more or less from the first appearance of men's history as a specialised area of inquiry, and shows no signs of abating. The first part of this article explores the sources of this unease. It discusses several guiding premises of men's history and shows that they tend to lead to the occlusion of men's gendered power over women. Nonetheless, the scrutiny of the gender of men is the logical outgrowth of several decades of theoretical and empirical work on gender–witness the many historians of women and gender who have recently turned their attention to the systematic study of manliness and masculinity. With the help of examples drawn from the scholarship on the history of the British colonies in America and the early United States, the second part of this article enumerates several strategies for successfully highlighting men's gendered power in histories of manliness and masculinity.     

Governing a Liminal Land Deal: The Biopolitics and Necropolitics of Gender

Over the past decade, there has been a surge in large-scale land acquisitions around the world. Yet, increasing evidence suggests that many of the prominent land deals signed during the global land rush are struggling to materialise. This emergent pattern of liminality has important implications for understanding the everyday, contingent, and gendered processes of land deal governance and subject formation. Drawing on ethnographic research, this article examines the gendered governance of a “liminal” land deal in coastal Tanzania, through a case of the EcoEnergy Sugar Project. It shows how the project's prolonged delay has given rise, over time, to two contradistinctive sets of actors and mechanisms of control: biopolitical interventions of international development consultants focused on livelihood improvements, and necropolitical interventions of district paramilitary forces focused on surveillance and violence. While seemingly contradictory, I argue that both enactments of power fundamentally relied on and reproduced normative gender in rural Tanzania.     

Constructing gender,constructing the urban: A review of Anglo-American feminist urban geography

This essay explores the changing shape of Anglo-American feminist urban geography, through a discussion of material published in Gender, Place and Culture and elsewhere over the past decade. We contextualize this discussion in relation to the development of feminist urban studies since the 1970s, showing its enduring commitment to work across traditional analytical divides that obfuscate crucial aspects of the mutual constitution of gender and the urban. Focusing on two thematic areas--affective experiences of urban space, and the making of urban public spaces--we examine how this commitment is expressed in recent contributions to feminist urban geography. Both bodies of work successfully challenge a divide between scholarship that focuses on how cities constrain, disadvantage and oppress women, and scholarship that focuses on how cities liberate women. However, we are disturbed by a seeming bifurcation between work concerned with issues of recognition and work focusing on issues of redistribution, with the former being well represented in Gender, Place and Culture and the latter more likely to be aired in 'mainstream' journals. We conclude by reflecting on our lack of perspective on the trajectories of feminist urban geography outside of the Anglo-American context and ask whether the boundaries within which our review has been conducted are themselves gendered.     

A Bigger Piece of a Very Small Pie: Intrahousehold Resource Allocation and Poverty Reduction in Africa

Feminist research has convincingly shown that an increase in household income does not necessarily lead to improvement in the well‐being of all members of the household. More questionable is the policy conclusion often drawn from this research for rural Africa: redressing gender imbalance in control of productive resources will significantly reduce poverty. This contribution argues that the evidence and analysis presented by two studies repeatedly cited to show that gender inequality is inefficient are problematic. It is mythical to suggest that tinkering with women's market position by exchanging unequal collective rights to productive resources for individual ones will decisively reduce rural poverty in Africa. That will depend on the restructuring of long‐term and deeply unequal processes of integration in the market, not on a firmer insertion of women within existing patterns of individualization and commodification of productive resources.     

The Intersection of Gender,Caste and Class Inequalities in Child Nutrition in Rural India

While studies have investigated inequalities in child nutrition along single axes of social power such as, gender, caste and class, there has not been any study that has examined the intersection of the different axes in determining nutritional outcomes of children. This paper examines the intersection of gender, class and caste in determining children's nutritional outcomes for rural north, rural south and rural India as a whole. The paper investigates the intersectionality of the three axes in rural India and focuses on regional differences. The results show that children with particular disadvantageous group affiliations often find significant compensatory benefits from other beneficial identities. Class inequality dominates caste inequality and caste inequality dominates gender inequality in rural North India for all levels of stunting. In contrast, caste inequality dominates class inequality which in turn dominates gender inequality for severe stunting in rural South India.     

Automobility and masculinities between home and work: trucks as the ‘new normal’ in Newfoundland and Labrador

Automobiles are ubiquitous objects of private consumption and their meaning and use are shaped by different aspects of identity, including gender. The gender dimensions of automobility associated with particular types of vehicles have not been extensively researched. This article studies pickup trucks and masculinities in relation to home and work in the industrial construction sector in Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada. There, like in much of North America, trucks have become the most commonly purchased new vehicles over the last decade. Their widespread popular appeal contrasts with their historical development for manual labour gendered as masculine, such as farming and fishing, in rural places and environments conducive to such labour. Drawing on interviews with construction industry actors and workers, the article shows how new, expensive trucks have come to reflect the hegemonic masculinity at male-dominated industrial construction projects, while also showing how the meanings and uses of trucks are complex and contested. Trucks are understood to be functional for work and driving, but they are also status symbols, often used only sparingly for commuting, masculinized domestic work and leisure activities. The article unpacks the new and expanding popularity of the truck and its positioning in practice in relation to masculinities, work, and to the landscape in a place-based gender regime. In doing so, it contributes to efforts to contextualize masculinities in place, while also revealing how they are related to gender constructs in other places and at other scales.     

A gendered practice of urban cultivation: performing power and well-being in M'Bour,Senegal

This article outlines how a theoretical approach that explores gender as ‘emplaced performance’ can improve the analytical value of gender by drawing attention to (1) the ways in which gender, as a socially and spatially contingent performance, is enrolled in the relationships that create the city, and (2) how the city, as a constantly evolving and dynamic field of interaction for economic, social, and political processes, (re)configures gender. Drawing on qualitative research carried out in M'Bour, Senegal, and through a case study of a form of urban cultivation called micro-gardening, this analysis explores gender as a socially and spatially contingent performance that produces, and is produced by, the city. The analysis brings together performativity studies with scholarship on place to fashion the analytical approach, and specifically draws attention to emplaced performances of well-being and power. Such an approach, because it draws attention to the contingent dimensions of gender, as well as the effects of gender on material worlds, has an improved analytical potential to inform locally relevant development interventions that recognize and consider the multiple ways in which men and women experience and create the city.     

Rural–Urban Migration and Gender Disparities in Child Healthcare in China and India

This article assesses the impact of rural–urban migration on gender disparities in children's access to healthcare in China and India. Much research has shown widespread discrimination against girl children in both countries, including in health investments, contributing to the well‐known problem of Asia's ‘missing’ women. Much less clear is the impact of the massive rural–urban migration now occurring in China and India on discrimination against daughters. Migration is usually thought to have a positive effect on child health, because of improved access to healthcare facilities, but this is not necessarily equally beneficial for both sons and daughters. Based on fourteen months of fieldwork with rural migrant families in Shenzhen (China) and Mumbai (India), this article argues that where migration improves access to healthcare, it may increase rather than decrease the gender gap in treatment of child illness in the short term, as resources are concentrated on the treatment of sons. Furthermore, it is not the case that rural–urban migration necessarily leads to better access to healthcare even for sons: some forms of migration may actually have an overall negative effect on child health outcomes. For these two reasons, development strategies focusing on large‐scale rural–urban migration should not be seen as a short‐term solution to problems of gender inequity in child health.     

Embodied negotiations: identity,space and livelihood after trade zones in the Dominican Republic

In this article, I analyze socio-spatial processes of subject-making at the center of the restructuring of export industries. To do so, I develop the concept of ‘embodied negotiations’ to explain the spatial and corporeal experience of trade zone workers reproduced as migrants with the collapse of garment exports in the Dominican Republic. Drawing on ethnographic research, I examine ‘rural return’ as both a livelihood strategy and a discourse shaped by inter-related gender and racial ideologies of labor as well as the uneven transnationalization of rural and urban localities. I show how the negotiation of social position by subjects marked by race, gender and class is always also a negotiation of spatial position in and between localities structured through raced, gendered and class relations. Men's efforts to remain in urban areas as a form of social ‘whitening’ are compared to women's resistance to rural return as an attempt to stay in circulation as paid labor. Overall, I argue that feminist research on global production should be ‘spatialized’ by attending to livelihoods and practices of subject-making that emerge in parallel to export restructuring.     

Women and microcredit: alternative readings of subjectivity,agency, and gender change in rural Mexico

Within the last two decades, the growth of microcredit, or the provision of small loans to poor borrowers, has become a key development initiative in the Global South. This is particularly important for questions of gender relationships, as the majority of microcredit recipients worldwide are low-income women. However, most assessments of microcredit and gender emphasize issues of individual empowerment rather than the large-scale political implications of credit provision. In this article, I critique the use of mainstream empowerment models employed in the assessment of microcredit's ability to provoke changes in gender relationships. I argue that these models often fail to describe microcredit's effects on women's lives due to their epistemological framework, which pushes aside questions of geographical and historical specificity in pursuit of a universally empowered microcredit subject. Examining a mainstream empowerment model I used to conduct research in rural Mexico, I highlight these problems and present an alternative analysis of subjectivity, agency, and gender change as a result of microcredit provision.     

A Community Issue? Rural Women's Feelings of Safety and Fear in New Zealand

Following previous geographies of gender and fear this article is stimulated by the dominance of urban accounts of women's experience of safety and fear in different ‘private’ and ‘public’ spaces1 This work is based on an article presented at the ‘Emotional Geographies’ conference (Lancaster University, September 2002). View all notes. We argue that rural and emotional geography perspectives on these issues provide new directions for both a feminist critique of the notion of ‘rural community’ and broadening of the emotional geographies literature. Communities have been studied at length in rural geography, yet the term itself can be problematic and its emotional potency has not been rigorously interrogated. Differing experiences of the rural community in relation to characteristics of, for example, class, gender, sexuality, age and ethnicity have led to a questioning of idyllic assumptions attached to rural life and the construction of ideas about the rural community. In this article we extend existing debates to argue that constructions of the rural community as an emotionally harmonious, safe and peaceful space may be challenged by women's experiences of fear in various rural spaces. We take the specific case of two contrasting Aotearoa/New Zealand communities and document how women negotiate personal feelings of safety and fear in their own areas. We highlight the absence of a binary of fear/safety, noting that women often live with and through these emotions in more complex ways. Finally, we close by placing this discussion within broader reflections on community as an emotionally charged term and as a rhetorical space of concern and/or responsibility in agency discourse and crime management.