Old, Female, and Rural


Book Description

In reading Old, Female, and Rural, you’ll discover just that--the reality concerning the daily living situations of the nation’s older female populations in rural places. This scholarly collection will help you and others dispel the romantic frontier myths of the stoic, tenacious, and independent rural woman. Instead, you’ll find real direction for change in the statistics that truly reflect the older rural woman’s mental, physical, economical, and social existence.Old, Female, and Rural will show you stark realities concerning the older rural female’s economic well-being, intergenerational family relationships, health care and service delivery availability, and long-term care concerns. The candid demographic and epidemiological data you discover in this book will not only expose the myths for what they are, but also allow you and others to transform the myths into daily realities of better policies and better living standards for the women who belong to this population subgroup. Specifically, you’ll read about: one woman’s subjective evaluation of growing old in a rural area rural women’s experiences of accessing health care the economic well-being of women aging in nonmetro areas changes in the informal support networks of women aging in the rural southwest a comprehensive synthesis of the above isolated topics, which provides future implications for research, education, and policyWhile the legends of the old American frontier have died, the older female populations in America’s rural areas live on--and they deal with some very challenging realities. Old, Female, and Rural takes you into the homes, lives, and minds of this complex and unique subgroup of America’s elders and points you and public administrators, government officials, educators, and civil servants toward the unsettled frontier of real social change.




Old, Female, and Rural


Book Description

In reading Old, Female, and Rural, you’ll discover just that--the reality concerning the daily living situations of the nation’s older female populations in rural places. This scholarly collection will help you and others dispel the romantic frontier myths of the stoic, tenacious, and independent rural woman. Instead, you’ll find real direction for change in the statistics that truly reflect the older rural woman’s mental, physical, economical, and social existence. Old, Female, and Rural will show you stark realities concerning the older rural female’s economic well-being, intergenerational family relationships, health care and service delivery availability, and long-term care concerns. The candid demographic and epidemiological data you discover in this book will not only expose the myths for what they are, but also allow you and others to transform the myths into daily realities of better policies and better living standards for the women who belong to this population subgroup. Specifically, you’ll read about: one woman’s subjective evaluation of growing old in a rural area rural women’s experiences of accessing health care the economic well-being of women aging in nonmetro areas changes in the informal support networks of women aging in the rural southwest a comprehensive synthesis of the above isolated topics, which provides future implications for research, education, and policy While the legends of the old American frontier have died, the older female populations in America’s rural areas live on--and they deal with some very challenging realities. Old, Female, and Rural takes you into the homes, lives, and minds of this complex and unique subgroup of America’s elders and points you and public administrators, government officials, educators, and civil servants toward the unsettled frontier of real social change.




Rural Women Workers in Nineteenth-century England


Book Description

The range of women's work and its contribution to the family economy studied here for the first time. Despite the growth of women's history and rural social history in the past thirty years, the work performed by women who lived in the nineteenth-century English countryside is still an under-researched issue. Verdon directly addresses this gap in the historiography, placing the rural female labourer centre stage for the first time. The involvement of women in the rural labour market as farm servants, as day labourers in agriculture, and as domestic workers, are all examined using a wide range of printed and unpublished sources from across England. The roles village women performed in the informal rural economy (household labour, gathering resources and exploiting systems of barterand exchange) are also assessed. Changes in women's economic opportunities are explored, alongside the implications of region, age, marital status, number of children in the family and local custom; women's economic contribution to the rural labouring household is established as a critical part of family subsistence, despite criticism of such work and the rise in male wages after 1850. NICOLA VERDON is a Research Fellow in the Rural History Centre, University of Reading.




Parliamentary Papers


Book Description




The Gender of Memory


Book Description

What can we learn about the Chinese revolution by placing a doubly marginalized group—rural women—at the center of the inquiry? In this book, Gail Hershatter explores changes in the lives of seventy-two elderly women in rural Shaanxi province during the revolutionary decades of the 1950s and 1960s. Interweaving these women’s life histories with insightful analysis, Hershatter shows how Party-state policy became local and personal, and how it affected women’s agricultural work, domestic routines, activism, marriage, childbirth, and parenting—even their notions of virtue and respectability. The women narrate their pasts from the vantage point of the present and highlight their enduring virtues, important achievements, and most deeply harbored grievances. In showing what memories can tell us about gender as an axis of power, difference, and collectivity in 1950s rural China and the present, Hershatter powerfully examines the nature of socialism and how gender figured in its creation.




Social Representations in the 'Social Arena'


Book Description

Social Representations in the 'Social Arena' presents key theoretical issues and extensive empirical research using different theoretical and methodological approaches to consider the value of social representation theory when social representations are examined in real world contexts. This comprehensive text brings together international experts to explore the relevance of a variety of applications of social representation theory in both institutional and organizational settings, and discusses how social representation theory compares with other constructs of social psychology. Areas covered include: justice leadership health and mental illness intergroup relations identity politics environment and tourism economics. This book will appeal to a range of academic researchers and practitioners from a variety of fields who are concerned with the application of social representation theory to various contexts as a heuristic tool for addressing and understanding relevant societal issues faced with 'social demand'.




Rural America


Book Description




Heartland


Book Description

*Finalist for the National Book Award* *Finalist for the Kirkus Prize* *Instant New York Times Bestseller* *Named a Best Book of the Year by NPR, New York Post, BuzzFeed, Shelf Awareness, Bustle, and Publishers Weekly* An essential read for our times: an eye-opening memoir of working-class poverty in America that will deepen our understanding of the ways in which class shapes our country and “a deeply humane memoir that crackles with clarifying insight”.* Sarah Smarsh was born a fifth generation Kansas wheat farmer on her paternal side, and the product of generations of teen mothers on her maternal side. Through her experiences growing up on a farm thirty miles west of Wichita, we are given a unique and essential look into the lives of poor and working class Americans living in the heartland. During Sarah’s turbulent childhood in Kansas in the 1980s and 1990s, she enjoyed the freedom of a country childhood, but observed the painful challenges of the poverty around her; untreated medical conditions for lack of insurance or consistent care, unsafe job conditions, abusive relationships, and limited resources and information that would provide for the upward mobility that is the American Dream. By telling the story of her life and the lives of the people she loves with clarity and precision but without judgement, Smarsh challenges us to look more closely at the class divide in our country. Beautifully written, in a distinctive voice, Heartland combines personal narrative with powerful analysis and cultural commentary, challenging the myths about people thought to be less because they earn less. “Heartland is one of a growing number of important works—including Matthew Desmond’s Evicted and Amy Goldstein’s Janesville—that together merit their own section in nonfiction aisles across the country: America’s postindustrial decline...Smarsh shows how the false promise of the ‘American dream’ was used to subjugate the poor. It’s a powerful mantra” *(The New York Times Book Review).




Women and the Family in Rural Taiwan


Book Description

Studies of Chinese society commonly emphasizze men's roles and functions, a not unreasonable approach to a society with patrilineal kinship structure. But this emphasis has left many important gaps in our knowledge of Chinese life. This study seeks to fill some of these gaps by examining the ways rural Taiwanese women manipulate men and each other in the pursuit of their personal goals. The source of a woman's power, her home in a social structure dominated by men, is what the author calls the uterine family, a de facto social unity consisting of a mother and her children. The first four chapters are devoted to general background material: a brief historical sketch of Taiwan and a description fo the settings in which the author's observations were made; the history of a particular family; the relation of Chinese women to the Chinese kinship system; and the interrelationships among women in the community. The remaining ten chapters take up in detail the successive stages of the Taiwanese woman's life cycle: infancy, childhood, engagement, marriage, motherhood, and old age. Throught the book the author presents detailed information on such topics as marriage negotiations, childbirth, child training practices, and the organization of women's groups.




Gender and Ageing


Book Description

This book examines common themes related to gender and ageing in countries in Southeast Asia. Derived from quantitative or qualitative methods of data collection and analysis, the chapters reveal how ageing has become tempered by globalization, cultural values, family structures, women’s emancipation and empowerment, social networks, government policies, and religion. The chapters are concerned primarily with the following questions related to gender and ageing: (a) how do women and men experience old age? (b) do women and men have different means of coping financially and socially in their old age? (c) does having engaged in wage work for longer periods of time serve as an advantage to older men in contrast to older women? (d) does a woman’s primary role as caregiver serve to disadvantage her in old age? (e) what kinds of identities have older women and men constructed for themselves? (f) do women and men prepare for ageing differently and has this preparation been mediated by educational levels? (g) does having a higher level of education make a difference to how one experiences ageing? (h) how does class shape the way women and men cope in old age? and (i) what does it mean to be a ‘single’ older person who has either lost a spouse through death or has never been married? Because the book employs a cross-country analysis, readers gain an understanding of contemporary emergent trends not only in each of the countries but also in Southeast Asia as a whole. Wherever relevant, some chapters have also identified similarities in trends on gender and ageing between countries in the Western hemisphere and those in Southeast Asia to highlight broader patterns across the world. "The share of the elderly in Southeast Asia’s population is steadily rising, and it is increasingly important to understand and plan for the implications of this trend. While in some aspects, the situation of older women and men in the region is similar, their life experiences of education, marriage, child-raising, work, and social networks differ, and this makes for different issues as they grow older. Moreover, a much higher proportion of elderly women than men face old age without a spouse. This book makes a major contribution to understanding the issues arising from ageing trends in Southeast Asia. Individual chapters in the book deal authoritatively with almost every country in the region, and are written by noted experts on the subject. The book will be an essential reading for anyone wishing to understand ageing issues in Southeast Asia, particularly from the perspective of gender." - Gavin Jones, Director, JY Pillay Comparative Asia Research Centre, National University of Singapore