Rural Women Workers Research Articles

Breast Health Education for Working Women in Appalachia: Insights from Focus Group Research

This study seeks to understand rural working women, their knowledge of health systems, and how breast health issues fit into their lives. A key aim of this study was to identify regionally and culturally specific factors that influence how these women approach breast health and to identify ways that more positive breast health behaviors can be achieved. Five focus groups (N = 42) were conducted among women at sites where the Breast Health Outreach Program (BHOP) had been conducted. Focus groups were composed of 7 to 10 women who were in about the same age cohort. Women provided multiple insights about their attitudes and behaviors related to breast heath concerns. Analysis of the data revealed that many of the comments clustered around two types of "systems" in these women's lives: the professional health care system and personal community systems. The BHOP provides a bridge between these two systems and seems to facilitate positive actions. Workplace health professionals also provide a bridge between professional and personal systems. Women exhibited the general distrust of the medical system that the literature indicates is often associated with Appalachian culture. However, this study found that distrust can be overcome with education programs that meet women where they live and work. Such programs are most likely to be successful when the materials and methods are sensitive to Appalachian culture and when medical services are brought into the community.

Review of Rural Women Workers in 19th Century England: Gender, Work, and Wages by Nicola Verdon:Rural Women Workers in 19th Century England: Gender, Work, and Wages

Review of Rural Women Workers in 19th Century England: Gender, Work, and Wages by Nicola Verdon:Rural Women Workers in 19th Century England: Gender, Work, and Wages

Rural Women Workers in 19th Century England: Gender, Work, and Wages

Rural Women Workers in 19th Century England: Gender, Work, and Wages

Book Reviews

Barbara Harriss‐White, India Working: Essays on Society and Economy.Phillipp Schofield, Peasant and Community in Medieval England, 1200–1500.Nicola Verdon, Rural Women Workers in 19th Century England: Gender, Work and Wages.Jonathan R. Pincus and Jeffrey Winters (eds), Reinventing the World Bank.Julie A. Charlip, Cultivating Coffee: The Farmers of Carazo, Nicaragua, 1880–1930.Monica M. van Beusekom, Negotiating Development: African Farmers and Colonial Experts at the Office du Niger, 1920–1960.Abdul Rahman Embong, State‐led Modernization and the New Middle Class in Malaysia.David M. Anderson, Eroding the Commons: The Politics of Ecology in Baringo, Kenya 1890s–1963.Jan Breman and Gunawan Wiradi, Good Times and Bad Times in Rural Java: Case Study of Socio‐Economic Dynamics in Two Villages Towards the End of the Twentieth Century.Mario Rutten, Rural Capitalists in Asia: A Comparative Analysis on India, Indonesia and Malaysia.

Nicola Verdon, Rural Women Workers in Nineteenth-Century England. Gender, Work and Wages, Rochester, Boydell & Brewer, 2002.

Nicola Verdon, Rural Women Workers in Nineteenth-Century England. Gender, Work and Wages, Rochester, Boydell & Brewer, 2002.

The emergence of the menopause in India

A total of 130 million Indian women are expected to live beyond the menopause into old age by 2015. The menopause is emerging as an issue owing to rapid globalization, urbanization, awareness and increased longevity in urban middle-aged Indian women, who are evolving as a homogeneous group. Improved economic conditions and education may cause the attitude of rural working women to be more positive towards the menopause. However, most remain oblivious of the short- and long-term implications of the morbid conditions associated with middle and old age, simply because of lack of awareness, and the unavailability or ever-increasing cost of the medical and social support systems. Evidence-based medicine is accessible to still only a few Indian women. Most menopausal women go untreated or use unproven alternative therapies.

Book Reviews

Books reviewed in this article:Phillipp R. Schofield, Peasant and Community in Medieval EnglandIan Kershaw & David M. Smith (eds.), The Bolton Priory CompotusMichael Jones (ed.), Revolution and Consumption in Late Medieval EnglandPeter Northeast (ed.), Wills of the Archdeaconry of SudburyPamela Sharpe, Population and Society in an East Devon ParishDonald Winch & Patrick K. O'Brien (eds.), The Political Economy of British Historical ExperienceS.D. Smith, ‘An Exact and Industrious Tradesman’Nicola Verdon, Rural Women Workers in Nineteenth‐Century EnglandJ.R. Wordie (ed.), Agriculture and Politics in EnglandLewis Johnman & Hugh Murphy, British Shipbuilding and the StateJairus Banaji, Agrarian Change in Late AntiquityAngeliki E. Laiou, The Economic History of ByzantiumAdriaan Verhulst, The Carolingian EconomyAdam Steinhouse, Workers' Participation in Post‐Liberation FrancePatrick Major & Jonathan Osmond (eds.), The Workers' and Peasants' StateRainer Karlsch & Raymond Stokes, The Chemistry must be RightMonica Chojnacka, Working Women of Early Modern VeniceHarold James & Jacob Tanner (eds.), Enterprise in the Period of Fascism in EuropeWendy Z. Goldman, Women at the GatesDavid Armitage & Michael J. Braddick (eds.), The British Atlantic worldSteven W. Usselman, Regulating Railroad InnovationNikki Mandell, The Corporation as FamilyBruce L. Gardner, American Agriculture in the Twentieth CenturyStefano Battilossi & Youssef Cassis (eds.), European Banks and the American ChallengeGeoffrey Jones & Lina Galvez‐Munoz (eds.), Foreign Multinationals in the United StatesMauro F. Guillén, The Limits of ConvergenceDennis O. Flynn, Arturo Giráldez & James Sobredo (eds.), Studies in Pacific HistoryNick Tiratsoo, Junichi Hasegawa, Tony Mason & Takao Matsumara, Urban Reconstruction in Britain and JapanDavid Zweig, Internationalizing ChinaCharles H. Feinstein & Mark Thomas, Making History CountPhillip Mirowski, Machine Dreams

The emergence of the menopause in India

A total of 130 million Indian women are expected to live beyond the menopause into old age by 2015. The menopause is emerging as an issue owing to rapid globalization, urbanization, awareness and increasedlongevity in urban middle-aged Indian women, who are evolving as a homogeneous group. Improved economic conditions and education may cause the attitude of rural working women to be more positive towardsthe menopause. However, most remain oblivious of the short- and long-term implications of the morbid conditions associated with middle and old age, simply because of lack of awareness, and the unavailabilityor ever-increasing cost of the medical and social support systems. Evidence-based medicine is accessible to still only a few Indian women. Most menopausal women go untreated or use unproven alternativetherapies.

Women and social movements in Latin America: power from below

* Preface * Acknowledgments * Chapter 1. Introduction:Gender and Politics, Experience and Structure * Part I. El Salvador * Chapter 2. Women's Rights Are Human Rights: The Merging of Feminine and Feminist Interests among El Salvador's Mothers of the Disappeared (CO-MADRES) * Chapter 3. Women for Dignity and Life: The Emergence of Feminisms from * El Salvador's Revolutionary Left * Interview. Morena Herrera, Women for Dignity and Life * Part II. Mexico * Chapter 4. The Politics of Urban Survival: The Women's Regional Council of the CONAMUP, Mexico * Interview. Irene Soto, Women's Regional Council of the CONAMUP * Chapter 5. The Unintended Consequences of Traditional Women's Organizing: The Women's Council of the Lazaro Cardenas Ejido Union, Nayarit * Interview. Dona Kata Moreno and Aurora Cruz, Lazaro Cardenas Ejido Union * Part III. Brazil * Chapter 6. Class, Gender and Autonomy: The Rural Women Workers' Movement of Southern Brazil * Interview. Gessi Bones and Marlene Pasquali, Rural Women Workers' Movement * Part IV. Chile * Chapter 7. Sweet and Sour Grapes: The Struggles of Seasonal Women Workers in Chile * Interview. Antonia Gomez, Interindustry Union of Seasonal and Permanent Workers of Santa Maria * Chapter 8. Conclusions: Women in Action * Notes * Bibliography * Index

Flexibility, the Family Ethic, and Rural Home-Based Work

Flexibility is often considered an advantage to workers, especially women. This article shows, however, that, in relation to home-based work by rural women workers, flexibility, when set within the frame work of the family ethic, is often a trade-off for job security, wages, and other benefits. The author suggests that work can become flexible only when tasks are no longer rigidly gendered.

Challenging Gender Inequality

Two case studies of the organisations of women rural workers. The experiences of the women in the Seasonal Workers' Union in Santa Maria, Chile and in the Rural Women Workers' Movement in southern Brazil provide examples of how women can begin to challenge subordinate female gender roles - at home and in the organizations they participate in - through grassroots organizing.

Changes in field, forest, and family: Rural women's work and status in post-revolutionary laos

Laos has undergone tremendous upheaval in the last century: colonization, wars, socialist revolution, and now economic liberalization. Lowland Lao women, traditionally a mainstay of the household and commercial economy, have been affected by these dramatic events. Socialist economic policies, political programs, and particularly ideology have influenced women's economic activities. As in other societies, because Lao women's work is an important component of their relative social status, actual or incipient changes in work roles may have broader implications for other aspects of women's lives. In some ways these changes have parallels in events, structures, and gender ideologies affecting women's lives and work in other parts of Southeast Asia, but some of these changes are unique to Laos.

Female labour participation in agricultural production and the implications for nutrition and health in rural Africa

The broad objectives of this paper are: firstly, to examine the initial impact of colonialism on food production by women, by considering their role and activity patterns within the household in terms of rights, obligations, exchanges, allocation of resources and responsibilities and the division of labour in the selected African Societies of the Luo, Kikuyu and Luhya (Kenya), Ewe and Kusasi (Ghana), Mandinka (The Gambia), Yoruba (Nigeria) and Azande (Sudan). These ethnic groups used as examples were mainly selected on the basis of their predominance and availability of data in these countries lying in the Sub-Saharan Africa having similar historical roots of the British colonial policies. Secondly, some of the possible social, economic and biological effects or implications on the changes in rural women's work in the chosen case studies in Africa are elucidated. It has been hypothesized that the development process in rural Africa has marginalized women (with varying degrees) in the subsistence sector, reducing their productivity and control over resources; and that women's total work burden has relatively increased, a phenomenon which can be understood as an integral process of capital penetration and accumulation. These changes may have significant implications for nutrition and health affecting the overall levels of food production. Although the selected illustrations do not represent the full range of possibilities in Sub-Saharan Africa, the data on the gender roles and workpatterns and the different changing ways do indicate that the women's role in food production has profound implications for socio-economic development in general and nutrition and health in particular with much wider applicability. In fact no such cross-sectional study has been conducted in rural Africa. It is generally concluded that any consideration of women's agricultural production should not neglect the structural bases of their inequality, and the policies can be inadequate if they overlook the relationship between the subsistence and commercial sectors and the women's role in each. In effect, the relative and absolute losses in women's food production and incomes bear immediately on the food crisis of many of the Sub-Saharan African countries, and that the current policies for the food crisis are likely to fail unless there is an improvement of the data base on women's and men's specific food production activities, processing and marketing for use in policy formulation and implementation. Indeed, the integration of women into the development process should be sensitive to and cognizant of their needs, contributions and potentials in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Conceptual framework to study rural women's work patterns and economic contribution to family resource development

The concern of this paper is to present a methodologylstrategy to study rural women's work patterns in Haryana. The major concern of the study was to analyse the work patterns of rural women belonging to different work status categories and to determine their economic contribution to family resource development both in terms of real income (unpaid work/household production for use) and money income (paid work).

Social-psychological factors related to work status of rural women

The study reported here examines sex role attitudes, perceived needs, and work status using a sample of 400 rural women, aged 16 through 64. A combination of social-psychological, human capital, and economic factors best discriminates between employed workers and homemakers-unpaid workers. Employed rural women have more education, lower household income net of own earnings, greater psychological needs, and more approving husbands' attitudes than rural homemakers and unpaid workers. Unpaid workers are not significantly different from full-time homemakers in sex role attitudes, needs, age, religion, education, household income, and husbands' attitudes. These findings document the importance of social-psychological as well as economic factors in relation to rural women's work roles.

Rural women in late nineteenth‐century Denmark

Around 1860–80 all the central areas of rural women's work in Denmark – spinning, weaving and baking – were gradually taken over by the growing industry in the towns. During the 1880s, also, women's dairy work became a field of male labour in the newly‐established cooperative dairies around the country. The sale of dairy products has played a great role in Danish agriculture and in the national economy from the 1860s until today. The article throws light on the place of women in dairy production until the 1880s and examines the factors which determined their being pressed out of this sort of work. Finally the problems and consequences with which women (and men) were faced when the transition to cooperatives dairies gave rise to an entirely new pattern of work and sex roles are examined.

Measuring Rural Women's Work and Class Position

On the basis of experience gained in researching the economic roles of rural women in a national level study in Colombia and in a regional level study in Peru, some of the methodological problems of measuring rural women's economic participation by sample survey are considered. The specific objective of the sample surveys was to quantify the existing sexual division of labor among the peasant population. The rural household was the unit of analysis, and the focus of measurement was the division of labor by sex in such activities as daily maintenance, household production, and income-generating activitives pursued outside the household. The focus of the survey questionnaire is on the sexual division of labor, but it necessarily must be related to another series of socioeconomic or cultural variables for analysis. The selection of these variables needs to be derived from the hypotheses guiding the study, yet much attention must be given to narrowing the range of inquiry. The time constraint on the length of the questionnaire requires that certain choices be made in terms of the complementary variables to be included. The most important problem in the design of a representative sample survey is the selection of the population to be sampled. The choice of population needs to be compatible with the theoretical framework. Since the interest was to measure the sexual division of labor in terms of class formation, the sample had to be representative of the different class strata in the rural areas. The measurement of access to means of production ideally should be quantitative and qualitative. The choice of the population to be sampled is also constrained by the available data base, a particular problem in rural areas.