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Day a Tribute to Rural Women
Research alliance launches website to broaden rural women's access to information
BY LORI BONA HUNT
World Rural Women's Day is Oct. 15, but rural women probably won't find time to celebrate. They're too busy working in fields, factories and hospitals and taking care of their families to take a day off, says Prof. Belinda Leach, Sociology and Anthropology. But urbanites should pause and pay homage to working rural women everywhere, says Leach, holder of the University Research Chair in Rural Gender Studies.
“These women's work sustains our urban lives. Yet urban people rarely recognize this. World Rural Women's Day is a great opportunity for urbanites to think about and recognize the work of rural women.”
Leach also directs the Rural Women Making Change (RWMC) community/university research alliance based in Guelph. The $1-million national project, supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, is a blend of advocacy, research and knowledge dissemination. It involves professors, leading feminist scholars, national unions, volunteers and advocates and community organizations.
Leach and her team stress the diversity of rural women's work in Canada: as automotive assembly and parts workers; as clerical, janitorial and food-service workers; as teachers, nurses and nurses aides; and working in the meat-packing industry, to name just a few.
For rural life in Canada continues to change, and women seem to be bearing the brunt of rural economic transformation, says Leach. Women are simultaneously dealing with disappearing social services, declining farm incomes and fewer employment and schooling options. Many hold down full-time jobs both on and off the farm while continuing to be the primary caregivers of children and elderly relatives. In addition, in some rural communities, services once offered by various levels of government are now provided by women through local resource centres on a volunteer basis, she says.
“The issues that are of concern to these women — child care, transportation, good pay and benefits, freedom from violence at home and shelters when they need them, training and other options for their daughters, and access to health and information resources — are rarely the priorities of urban-focused policy-makers.”
The alliance's overarching goal is to identify challenges specific to rural women and to examine better approaches to meeting needs. It also aims to help empower them to influence public policy at all levels of government. Already, RWMC teams have produced resources for rural women, including a workshop for women wanting to work in manufacturing jobs, a “GURALzine” for rural girls and new training options.
In celebration of World Rural Women's Day, RWMC is launching a major resource for rural women's organizations, policy-makers and academics: an interactive website. Located at www.rwmc.uoguelph.ca, it is designed to help rural women who have limited access to each other and the information they need.
“It directly addresses the isolation and invisibility that many rural women experience,” Leach says.
Among other things, the website contains cutting-edge research findings, resources on Canadian rural women and their organizations, an online version of “GURAL zine” and an events database.