Feminisms and Ruralities

Pini, B., Brandth, B., & Little, J. (Eds.) (2015). Feminisms and ruralities. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.In their new edited book, Feminisms and Ruralities, Barbara Pini, Berit Brandth, and Jo Little bring together a collection of essays that discuss the intersection of feminism and rural studies. The plural in the title of their edited volume reveals their concerns and aims: to bring into conversation the multiplicity of feminisms and ruralities that intersect with and impact rural everyday lives. That is, a driving force in their book is to highlight the different ontological manifestations of feminism and rurality; how and why they intersect; what can they tell us about the profound social, economic, and cultural structural changes in rural life; and how they challenge traditional assumptions of rural identities. The result is an important book that illustrates the complexity and contested nature of both concepts, and that highlights the theoretical and empirical work that has been done and needs to follow in order to fill the research gap around the concept of difference in rural spaces.The book is divided in two sections: "The Feminist Movement and Rural Women" and "Feminist Perspectives of Rurality." The introduction and conclusion, which sit outside these two sections, are not to be missed. In the former, the three editors set the agenda of the volume in an astute, complex, and elegant way, but most importantly, they outline the varied epistemological and methodological contributions that feminism has made to the field of rural studies. For example, they argue that feminism introduced gender as an important analytical category to challenge the masculinized political economy view of rural studies and practices. Nonetheless, and surprisingly to me, Pini, Brandth, and Little are also pessimistic about the continuous "specialized and discrete" place that feminist critique occupies in rural studies (p. 3). For instance, from the first sentence of the book, the authors claim that their starting point is to question and problematize why different forms of feminism have not been taken up by rural research. The editors speculate that the reasons might be anchored in the urban profile of many feminists in academia and/or stereotypes of rural women as conservative subjects who are detached from the gender egalitarian cause and thus not a prime focus for research. I agree with them that feminist studies have concentrated on urban rather than rural spaces. However, I believe that recent handbooks on rural studies (e.g. Cloke, Mardsen & Mooney, 2006; Shucksmith & Brown, 2016) and the important work of some of the editors and contributors to this book (e.g., Sally Shortall, Lia Bryant) over the years challenge this pessimistic view by the authors.The first part of the book, "The Feminist Movement and Rural Women," addresses and recognizes the long political history of rural women in the feminist cause (e.g., in suffrage movements, law reform, and agricultural organizations). These chapters, drawing from the United States, Canada, Australia, and the Nordic region, aim to demystify the idea of women in rural spaces as passive subjects. The contributors to the seven chapters in this section depict the diversity of women's social and political struggles and challenge the perception of rural women's social positions as "companion" of the active farming male breadwinner and as caregiver and organizer of the household. They reveal women and feminist movement in motion rather than a static subject dependent of the Other(s).In my view, the chapter by Sally Shortall on the tension between gender mainstreaming and essentialism in European Union policy reflects an emblematic issue of 21st-century democratic societies. Here Shortall aptly demonstrates the tension between policies that turn away from the particularities of individuals in order to mainstream processes and practices to stop discrimination and the work that gender essentialism does to turn attention back on the group. …