Rejecting the view of women’s gender identity as biologically produced (and men’s as socially produced), many feminists have come to name society as the construction site of gender differences (McCormack, 1993). Simultaneously, feminist scholars warn against going so far as to fictionalize the category ‘woman’, as such a deconstruction would ‘deprive us of a position from which to speak as women, and a collective basis for struggle’ (Jackson, 1993, p. 5). In a similar vein, Cosslett et al. (1996) write that the constructedness of identities in no way diminishes the reality of experiencing them – a reality that is often difficult for women to navigate, given the contradictory positions created by decades of equating the word ‘person’ with ‘male’ (Howell et al., 2002). In response, a number of feminist scholars have embraced the concept of ‘intersectionality’, which requires inequalities to be examined as they appear across different social contexts and in relationship with the vast variety of women’s lived experiences (Risman, 2004). Nevertheless, while women as individuals and in organizations have long fought against pervasive forms of domination, new forms emerge and become ensconced even as the old are torn down (Bartky, 1993).
1.1.2 Gender roles
In a social system where the domination of women is continually resurrecting itself in new forms, sex roles are produced and reproduced to reflect this dynamic (Sanday, 1993). With childbearing and child-rearing (nature/biology) still commonly viewed as determinants of women’s proper social roles (Lawler, 1996), and housework and childcare still being performed primarily by women (even those who work outside the home) (Keith and Malone, 2005), it is a short leap to McCormack’s statement that ‘There would not be the social ferment over gender roles in Western industrial societies today if a substantial number of men and women did not subscribe to the thesis of universal female subordination’ (Jackson, 1993, p. 85). Whether or not that thesis stands is a matter of contestation (Sanday, 1993). Nevertheless, women who mentally subscribe to feminist dissent against subordination may remain in exactly such a situation out of emotional commitment (Grimshaw, 1993).
In a 1993 study on women who worked full-time, Walby discovered this same attitude towards housework undertaken in addition to their outside work (Walby, in Henig, 1996). Despite the isolation of housework (as compared with the communal atmosphere of outside work, which many of them enjoyed), the women she interviewed not only viewed it as an expression of the love they held for their husbands and (in many cases) children, but saw it as appropriate for women to do this work and became defensive of their families when Walby attempted to broach the subject of their home workload. The women in Walby’s study, by their outside work, stand in contrast to women who work exclusively in the home and accept that their efforts belong to a ‘separate sphere’ of work (Henig, 1996). Conversely, these same women who work outside the home still have both feet firmly planted in the domestic sphere, believing in the necessity of being solely responsible for the housework. This interaction between women’s outside (paid) and home (unpaid) work has been described as the central concept in understanding women’s experiences of being treated unequally to men (Truman, 1996).
Fourteen years after Walby’s research, Cunningham (2008, pp. 1–2) described the results of a longitudinal study linking gender ideology and housework. According to the study’s results, the second half of the 20th century saw an increase in the number of women in the labour force paralleled by a decrease in their household duties. Interestingly, ‘their support for gender differentiated family roles’ also fell (Cunningham, 2008). In linking gender ideology with participation in the labour market, Cunningham argued that women with egalitarian attitudes towards gender roles were more likely to have jobs outside the home and, further, to work longer hours than less-egalitarian women who worked outside the home (Cunningham, 2008). Additionally, women with young children were less likely to be employed (Cunningham, 2008). These occupational choices affect short-term job arrangements, but may have long-term consequences as well, since traditionally a long-term career is only offered as one continuous path of full-time employment leading to ever-higher levels of responsibility. Thus, women are often denied admission to the highest levels of organizations, regardless of their experience and skills (Truman, 1996).
Within the home, men’s and women’s tasks are still highly segregated (Keith and Malone, 2005). Women are often conscripted into similar roles in their outside work as well – caring roles that are unrecognized and unrewarded (Adkins and Lury, 1992). Even as women enter professional worlds such as law and medicine in increasing numbers, gender roles and inequalities transform to maintain themselves (Truman, 1996). In some cases this is played out to the extent that, even in similar (or the same) job positions, work requirements may vary by gender, with women being seen as less skilled and therefore given fewer opportunities to gain new and more valuable skills (Lawler, 1996). Not only is gender itself a factor in women’s ability to gain new skills (and thus attain higher positions within organizations), but women’s unpaid work may also cause them to make occupational choices differently from men – especially when a wife and/or mother’s prospective job does not lend itself to easily accessible childcare and is not within an acceptable proximity of her unpaid work (i.e. the home) (Henig, 1996). Moreover, time spent in working in the home lessens wages – particularly for young and middle-aged women (Berik, 1996; Keith and Malone, 2005).
1.1.3 Summary: Gender relations, identities and roles
Issues regarding gender roles, relations and identities are present in all aspects of society, where they are produced and reproduced. Although feminism has brought many of these issues to light, this review of the broader literature suggests that most men and women continue to function in socially prescribed patterns. From this point forward, the literature reviewed will focus more specifically on the circumstances of rural and farm women.
1.2 Rural Women
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