Rural Women's Self-concepts and Aspirations as Members of Selected Voluntary Organisations in New Zealand, Australia and Canada

Evidence from questionnaires completed by members of five rural women's organisations in 1994 and 1995 (three traditional and two younger organisations) clarifies the motives women have, and the identities they assume, in joining these organisations. The older organisations attract women who wish to make a commitment to their community but newer organisations attract women who see themselves as farmers, or as employees and professionals in the agricultural industry. This represents a major shift in gender dimensions of rurality that has taken place during the last twenty years or so. It indicates a ‘mobilisation’ of rural and farm women who seek to participate fully - in their productive role and in the public sphere - in the attempt to maintain the viability of family farms and rural communities. The role that organisations for men and women play in constituting the meaning of gender is discussed.     

SPATIAL CONSTRAINTS ON WOMEN'S WORK IN TARIJA,BOLIVIA

ABSTRACT. This geography of women's work in the less‐developed world is set in Tarija, Bolivia, a small city that has been dramatically changed by economic crisis and structural‐adjustment programs. Explored is the spatial component of women's economic activities in a low‐income barrio following the imposition of structural‐adjustment programs in the 1980s and 1990s. Women who pursue employment away from home must rely on other women. In particular, households that include more than one woman who is capable of handling important daily chores are more likely to have a woman engaged in income‐generating activities away from the home and the neighborhood. Women at home make it possible for other women to extend their economic activity into the broader community. These findings are important because they draw attention to women's reliance on other women, how women use space, and how they are constrained by spatial factors as they negotiate their daily lives.     

Developing Contradictions: Women's Participation as a Site of Struggle Within an Indian NGO*

Women are being hired in increasing numbers by development projects to facilitate women's participation components. Once employed, however, women often find themselves marginalized within their organizations. In this paper, I find that the women's participation component of an Indian drinking water project has enabled the exclusion of women fieldworkers employed by the project. Drawing on the work of Bakhtin, I show participatory approaches as multiple, partial, and contentious. Moves to thwart women fieldworkers and women's participation give rise to struggles over development geography. Analysis of project records, interviews with staff, and observation of staff activities provide evidence for results.     

NEGOTIATING DUALISMS: WOMEN, LOCALITY AND EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITIES IN OAXACA CITY, MEXICO

This paper examines the validity of the public/private and reproductive/productive dichotomies commonly adopted in the analysis of gender and employment. It considers three aspects of the dualisms: spatial division, activity patterns and the construction of identities. The discussion is based on fieldwork undertaken in three districts of Oaxaca City, Mexico, between 1992 and 1995. While recognising the usefulness of spatial dualisms within Mexican cities, the paper seeks to identify the ways in which class and location within the urban space affect the construction of the boundary between “public” and “private”, women's “employment” experiences, and women's identities.     

COMMUTING DISTANCE AND GENDER AMONG NONMETROPOLITAN UNIVERSITY EMPLOYEES*

The applicability of metropolitan-derived explanations of gender differences in worktrip lengths is examined based on a sample of 435 university employees in the nonmetropolitan town of Blacksburg, VA. Women's worktrips are found to be longer than men's in contrast to metropolitan findings. This pattern results from the interaction of spatial structures of housing and employment with women's lower incomes, gender segregation of employment, and the tendency for married women to find jobs after their residence is established. Upward trends in female labor force participation rates and in nonmetropolitan growth require continued analysis of their joint impact on women's spatial behavior.     

CHANGING EXPECTATIONS AND INSTITUTIONS: AMERICAN WOMEN GEOGRAPHERS IN THE 1970S

ABSTRACT. In 1973 Wilbur Zelinsky lamented and documented the low representation of women in American academic geography. His attention reflected the climate of the times—the challenges of the women's movement, affirmative action, and feminist activism in the professions. Drawing on archives and personal narratives, this article addresses the paradoxes and politics of women's place in American academic geography in the 1970s. As increasing numbers developed new aspirations for graduate education and professional work, stereotyping, discrimination, the lack of mentoring, and the challenges of a job market whose peak had passed presented difficulties. Yet persistence, resistance, and feminist political activism worked to advance women's professional standing and visibility, especially at the national level within the Association of American Geographers and in the development of new research and teaching on the geography of women.     

Sisterhood and Seine‐Nets: Engendering Development and Conservation in Ghana's Marine Fishery

As processors and marketers of fish, women fishtraders in the Fanti town of Cape Coast, Ghana have become powerful financers and owners of canoes, nets, and other fishing equipment. Since the 1960s, when motors were first introduced to Ghana's artisanal canoe fleet, two interrelated processes have occurred in Cape Coast. First, Ghana's fisheries have become increasingly exploited and—in the case of some species—overfished. Second, the social relations of production in the artisanal sector have shifted from being socially embedded to being more market‐based and impersonal. I argue that two recent Women in Development (WID) projects in particular have contributed to the breakdown of fishtraders’ traditional economic networks and livelihood strategies: (a) loan schemes that target women's associations, and (b) the 1985 Intestate Succession Law, which reconfigured inheritance rights. These WID projects, based on western notions of gender and the household, have created disharmony and mistrust among Cape Coast's fishtraders rather than promoting their “development.” The breakdown of fishtraders’ labor and marketing organizations has resulted in increasingly desperate strategies to get fish, increased degradation of Ghana's marine environment, and uncertainty for the future of the coastal economy.     

“A Royal Geographical Society for Ladies”: The Lyceum Club and Women's Geographical Frontiers in Edwardian London

This article reconstructs the history, organization, and campaigning function of the Geographical Circle of the Lyceum Club—a membership group that, under the leadership of Bessie Pullen-Burry (1858–1937), sought to promote and legitimize women's geographical work in early twentieth-century Britain. Through an examination of archival material and contemporary press coverage, I document the Geographical Circle's efforts to establish itself as a professional body for women geographers and to lobby for their admission to the Royal Geographical Society. Although considerable scholarly attention has been paid to women geographers’ individual contributions to the discipline, their cooperative, professionalizing endeavors have been comparatively neglected. In tracing the parallel history of the Circle as an example of women's self-organization, and of Pullen-Burry as an independent campaigner, I argue that a nuanced account of women's professionalization in geography demands attention to both individual and collective endeavors.     

Gender and local soil knowledge: Linking farmers' perceptions with soil fertility in two villages in the Philippines

Scientists often turn to farmers to understand soil management. This process reveals differences and overlaps between local and scientific soil knowledge but rarely considers women and gender issues. This paper examines men's and women's local knowledge of soils in upland, smallholder farms in two villages in Mindanao, the Philippines, using focus group discussions, semi‐structured household interviews, field visits, GIS and soil testing. Farmers' field areas were calculated and delineated based on their perceptions of the different types of soils on their land. Men and women chose the same plots for what they considered their best soil but differed on what they felt were their worst. The fertility of the soils that women considered to be the best and worst was not significantly different from that of the men's respective choices. There was a difference in fertility, however, between the best and worst soils regardless of gender. Although soil fertility analyses showed that the women's chosen soils were similar to men's, analyses of qualitative data showed that their knowledge of soils was different and was based in part on a gendered division of labour. A multidisciplinary approach helped bridge the gap between sociocultural and physical research.     

CONTAINMENT AND MISMATCH: GENDER DIFFERENCES IN COMMUTING IN METROPOLITAN LABOR MARKETS

The spatial containment of women relative to men remains a prominent theme in research on women's employment in American cities. Drawing on a dataset for all metropolitan areas in the United States in 1990, this research analyzes the contextual variability of containment effects and the link between localized commutes and the incidence of occupational sex segregation. Women's more localized commutes persist across most of the urban system, with particularly wide differentials in suburban labor markets in proximity to national service and finance centers. Treatment effects models confirm that differences in the extent of local labor markets among women reinforce occupational sex segregation, but the effect varies by mode of travel. Working close to home slightly increases the likelihood of segregation for women with access to private automobiles, suggestive of spatial containment. Among women reliant on bus transportation, spatial mismatch is so severe that even poorly paid secondary jobs require long commutes.     

(Anti?) Colonial Women Writing War

This paper examines the wartime literature of Sarah Selwyn, Mary Ann Martin, and Caroline Abraham, all wives of prominent church and government men in colonial Aotearoa/New Zealand. Along with their husbands these women became leading participants in the “pamphlet war” surrounding the justice and legality of the colonial government's survey and confiscation of Māori land at Taranaki, c. 1850–1860. I analyze the socio‐spatial frameworks of these colonial women, linking them with their protest narratives of the Taranaki confiscations and ensuing war. The anti‐colonial position articulated by these women must be viewed within the context of ideological constraints on women's participation in public life, but also within the context of expanded social and spatial boundaries of such high‐placed colonials, the gendered space of the episcopal residences during wartime, the women's networks of communication, and their material and discursive links to public arguments taking place in England over colonial conflicts.     

Heading Households and Heading Businesses: Rural Kenyan Women in the Informal Sector

The dynamics of intra-household economics among sedentary farmers in rural Kenya suggest that women, whether or not they have a male household head, are responsible for providing basic resources to insure the daily survival of household members. Many rural Kenyan women operate small businesses in rural market centers in order to meet these obligations, and many of these women are also heads of their households. This paper examines women's resource bases for establishing and maintaining small-scale businesses. Compared to women who are associated with male-headed households, women who head households have fewer resources for establishing businesses which in turn generate lower earnings. At the same time, these women are almost completely dependent on their businesses for meeting the household's needs.     

‘I want to take risks,like my mother’: Memory,affect, and Vietnamese masculinities – the legacy of gendered variations in socio-economic mobility during Ðổi mới

Young Vietnamese men who witnessed their mother's changing economic and labour market situations through the early years of Ð?i m?i (the policy of economic liberalization in Vietnam after 1986) have developed conceptions of masculinity that are ambivalent to notions of male power and authority within what is often termed the ‘traditional’ neo-Confucian family. On the basis of the life narratives of a small group of men in their early twenties, the author suggests that the value young men place on their mother's work and familial influence during Ð?i m?i contrasts with the findings of much gender scholarship on women's social and economic (im) mobility in the 1990s in Vietnam and on young men's own masculinist narratives. Most gender-sensitive research in this area has suggested that Vietnamese women remained curtailed in the early 1990s by a resurgence of male-oriented kinship systems and patriarchal structures at household level. However, the author discusses the young men as being equivocal. While invoking broad Confucian tropes, these men remember their mothers as economically dynamic relative to their fathers. This led to the informants citing their mother's histories of economic risk-taking as exemplifying free-market capability. Further, the finding suggests that Vietnamese women's social and economic mobility in the 1990s strongly affected young men's contemporary ideas and practices related to masculinity.     

A Review of “Rebuilding Urban Places After Disaster: Lessons from Hurricane Katrina”

Women's earnings, employment, and commutes have generally lagged men's. Geographers emphasize the effects of women's gender roles on their spatial entrapment as limiting their job opportunities and labor market status. This research methodologically advances spatial entrapment research by utilizing a national model of commuting with spatial fixed effects to make more accurate predictions and generalizations. Second, this research found that a control group of same-sex partners allows for more direct isolation and measurement of the gender role effect on women's commutes. This research concluded that women's gender roles are negatively affecting their commuting range and, therefore, their labor market status.     

CONSENSUS AND INVISIBILITY: THE REPRESENTATION OF WOMEN IN HUMAN GEOGRAPHY TEXTBOOKS*

Neither the accomplishments of feminist scholarship, nor recent geographic research on women, seems to have had much effect on the representation of women in human geography textbooks. Relying on a set of traditional models, these texts reproduce the gender blind fictions of consensus, neutrality, and objectivity that the models and the textbooks themselves construct. Because the texts that initiate students into the discipline lag so seriously behind current consciousness and scholarship, women's invisibility not only continues in the human geography curriculum and classroom but is actually intensified by our own pedagogy.     

The first rural women's network in New South Wales: seventy years of the country women's association

The Country Women's Association of NSW (CWA) is the main voice of rural women in the state. It has been the biggest women's organisation in NSW until very recently. Its significant contribution to rural community development has been overlooked. After its foundation in 1922, the CWA established a widespread women's network, as well as many facilities for women and children. The necessary fund‐raising activities required the organisation of regular social activities in country towns. The CWA has always affirmed women's traditional gender roles, and it has never challenged the male hegemony typical of rural Australia. By contributing to the improvement of rural conditions, to the stability of family life and to local social activities, the CWA has helped to develop the rural economy as well as local and national identity. It has helped women put down roots in country areas. Its future role needs to be defined in the context of the difficult economic situation, and of the changes in gender roles, in rural NSW.     

ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH RISKS AND GENDER IN THE KARAKORAM‐HIMALAYA,NORTHERN PAKISTAN*

ABSTRACT. Many mountain peoples face water and environmental health problems. At particular risk is the health of women and of children who live in remote and marginalized mountain areas. Environmental health concerns are often associated with the waterborne parasitic and endemic diseases responsible for much child morbidity and mortality in the Karakoram‐Himalaya of northern Pakistan. Poor environmental health and water‐quality conditions affect child survival, and challenges to viable local interventions are severe. Transformations in women's productive and reproductive work have health consequences for children, and gender and household dynamics shape and mediate women's responses to environmental health risks. Significantly, these findings draw attention to the need for improved water and health policy, especially policy that recognizes different gender and child‐care roles in mountainous regions of the developing world.     

Faculty Reappointment,Tenure, and Promotion: Barriers for Women

Women faculty continue to experience academe differently than male faculty. A review of recent literature indicates that women's representation on university faculties has advanced slowly; women are less likely to be tenured or promoted compared to male faculty; and women faculty earn less than their male colleagues. A recurring theme is that the intellectual and social isolation of women faculty affects their research productivity. Gender stereotypes held by colleagues, departmental and college administrators, and students also contribute to the difficulties women face in the reappointment, tenure, and promotion process. A personal perspective on the reappointment process is provided in order to illustrate how isolation and naïvete regarding the social structure of academe can affect a woman's career advancement. The benefits of greater representation of women on university faculties are reviewed, and departmental and college administrators are reminded of the important role they play in ensuring future gender‐balanced faculties.     

Faculty Reappointment,Tenure, and Promotion: Barriers for Women

Women faculty continue to experience academe differently than male faculty. A review of recent literature indicates that women's representation on university faculties has advanced slowly; women are less likely to be tenured or promoted compared to male faculty; and women faculty earn less than their male colleagues. A recurring theme is that the intellectual and social isolation of women faculty affects their research productivity. Gender stereotypes held by colleagues, departmental and college administrators, and students also contribute to the difficulties women face in the reappointment, tenure, and promotion process. A personal perspective on the reappointment process is provided in order to illustrate how isolation and naïvete regarding the social structure of academe can affect a woman's career advancement. The benefits of greater representation of women on university faculties are reviewed, and departmental and college administrators are reminded of the important role they play in ensuring future gender-balanced faculties.     

Health Seeking Behavior: Q‐Structures of Rural and Urban Women in India with Sexually Transmitted Diseases and Reproductive Tract Infections

I use a gender framework to examine why women need to utilize social networks to discover and resolve problems related to reproductive tract infections (RTI) and sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). In India, women's health is linked with social status and perception of their health needs. This paper provides insight on how social networks are gender‐, location‐, and context‐specific and how they are linked to STD issues. This paper examines why social networks are integral to women. The health‐seeking behavior of rural and urban casual sex workers is examined via Q‐analysis, a language of mapping relationships. Results from Q‐analysis reveal women's use of four systems—kinship, belief, traditional medical, and western medical services. Finally, I conclude with important implications for research on gender relations and social networks.