Introduction 9
need to be balanced with an awareness of interactions across wider contexts: as
Little writes, studies of gender and rurality aim ‘to draw attention to the distinc-
tiveness of rural places’ while locating ‘the characteristics of men’s and women’s
lives in rural communities within an understanding of wider regional, national
and international gender relations’.^34
Geographical understandings of the intersections between gender and space
are also constructive in helping us understand some of the more embedded
spatial myths that have shaped rural spaces and that can inform our reading of
the various ways in which men and women were present in and interact with
rural landscapes. Perhaps the most prevalent form that the gendering of rural
space has taken is the myth of place as feminized. As Gillian Rose identifi es, the
visual ideolog y of landscape oft en employs a sexualized discourse of masculine
conquest of the feminized, sexualized land.^35 Th is ideolog y serves to distance
women from both representing the rural landscape, positioning them as objects
of the myth rather than creators or subjects; so too does it position women as
‘out of place’ in natural spaces that are more typically understood as the realm of
masculine subject-position.
As interpreters of the rural in relation to gender we also need to be aware of
the persistence of stereotypical constructions of the rural in contemporary cul-
tural consciousness which have become so ingrained and familiar, and the work
of geographers is helpful in understanding the perseverance of myths of the gen-
dered rural to the present day. As Sayer identifi es, the ‘myth of the rural woman
is still with us and is still being constructed through the ever-changing discourses
of femininity, national identity and pastoral, in many media’.^36 One indicative
recent example of this is the TV programme ‘Th e Farmer Wants a Wife’ which
centres around (male) farmers choosing from a selection of ‘urban’ women to ful-
fi l the role of ‘farmer’s wife’, thus continuing to perpetrate the idea of the rural
farm as a space of heteronormative and patriarchal structures.^37 As Jo Little rec-
ognizes, despite women’s increasing involvement in rural spaces, for example in
recreational activities, women continue to be perceived as out of place in rural
environments: ‘their presence there may be seen as unsettling and inappropriate’.^38
Gendered discourses also continue to inform political and economic decisions
about the rural environment: as Lynsey McCulloch’s essay in this collection iden-
tifi es, the Great Fens project in East Anglia, which aims to restore the wetlands,
continues to employ a narrative that ‘unknowingly romanticizes the masculine
heroism of the old English’.^39 For these reasons, although the essays in this collec-
tion are focused on an earlier period in rural history, the discussions they generate
around the gendered politics of the rural environment continue to have relevance
and application to the rural debates of the present day.