Feminist Looking Glass

Here is a perspective I hadn’t heard of before.  The agricultural website Capital Press (“The West’s AG Website”) has an article titled “Historian studies origins of rural feminism.”

Capital Press Logo

According to the article, the “usual explanation for the spread of feminism in the nation’s rural areas” is that it trickles down from urban centers.  However, a paper from Jenny Barker-Devine, an assistant professor at Illinois College in Jacksonville, Ill., proposes that some of the rise in feminism in rural areas in the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s may have come from the participation of husbands in a leftist organization called the National Farmers Organization, which was viewed by many in the mid-west as far too radical and maybe even communist.  (Oh no, not communist.  The horror.)

The thinking goes like this.  The husbands spent a lot of time with the NFO and didn’t spend much time on the farm.  The wives were “largely absent” from the NFO, but still were required to keep “the farms running in addition to their roles as mothers and housekeepers.”  This strain on the women resulted in “divorces and broken homes, strained marital relations, and farming operations that suffered.”

According to Barker-Devine:

“We might consider that, instead of trickling from urban areas,” she said, feminist ideas might have arisen among some women living in the countryside because of their exposure to such “forward thinking” organizations as the NFO.

Interesting.  But poor treatment and inequality is  the same whether it occurs in “rural areas” or “urban centers” or whether it occurs because of husbands’ work in leftist organizations.  The thing that “trickles down” from somewhere else is the knowledge that others are suffering the same situations and are taking action against them.  Try again, professor.