Feminist concern with difference has rarely extended to rurality even if it is now widely recognized that experiences of inequality depend on intersections of several identities in each individual life. This lack of concern may reflect the urban background of the majority of feminist academics or at least their urban positionality once in the academy. It may equivalently be that feminists have been influenced by stereotypes of rural women as traditional and reactionary, and thus seen them as unlikely exponents of gender equality, and an unfruitful focus for scholarly energies. Perhaps the problem is a broader one, that is, reflective of the much documented, but still apparent unwillingness of many feminists to recognize and address difference in any of its manifestations. Regardless, even with the recent interest in intersectionality which has necessarily renewed and reenergized debates in feminism about diversity and inclusion, the question of how women are differently positioned because of their non-metropolitan location has remained largely overlooked.
Chapter 1: Introduction, Barbara Pini, Berit Brandth and Jo Little Chapter 2: Putting the Community First: Feminism and Rural American Women's Activism in the Twentieth Century, Sara Egge and Jenny Barker Devine Chapter 3: A Rural Woman's Impact on Canadian Feminist Practice and Theory, Susan Machum Chapter 4: Feminism in Rural Finland: A Comparison of Agendas of Two Women's Organizations, Maarit Sireni Chapter 5: Paradoxes of a Women's Organization in the Forestry Industry, Berit Brandth, Gro Follo and Marit S. Haugen Chapter 6: Gender Mainstreaming or Strategic Essentialism? How to Achieve Rural Gender Equality, Sally Shortall Chapter 7: Feminist Connections in and beyond the Rural, Belinda Leach Chapter 8: The Feminist and the Cowboy: Reading "An Unlikely Love Story", Barbara Pini and Imelda Whelehan Chapter 9: The Development of Feminist Perspectives in Rural Gender Studies, Jo Little Chapter 10: Finding `Room to Manoeuvre' - Gender, Agency and the Family Farm, Anne Byrne, Nata Duvvury, Aine Macken-Walsh and Tanya Watson Chapter 11: The Gendered Ma(i)ze of Globalization, Jennifer Rogers-Brown Chapter 12: Rural Queer Theory, Julie Keller Chapter 13: Girls' Studies in the Rural, Kate Cairns Chapter 14: Reflections on a Feminist Care Approach to Rural Fisheries Communities, Nicole Power Chapter 15: Memory Work and Reflexive Gendered Bodies: Examining Rural Landscapes in the Making, Lia Bryant and Mona Livholts Chapter 16: Conclusion, Barbara Pini, Jo Little and Berit Brandth
