Rural. Women. Leaders. Identity Formation in Rural Northern Ireland

This chapter examines how rural women’s interactions with both men and other women shaped the ways in which they incorporated gender roles and relations into their concepts of leadership. Women’s identities as “rural” and “woman” and “leader” are shaped by interactions through which they internalise gender roles and relations. Many participants in this study of rural women leaders in Northern Ireland recounted experiences of being mentored by and/or working closely with men. Simultaneously, many of the women described having powerful female role models in their families. The chapter discusses how those connections affected participants’ concepts of gender relations, their perceptions of the presence or absence of gender bias within organizations, and their view of care for others as the hallmark of womanhood. It will further be demonstrated that this ethic of care was reflected in one of the most telling findings of the study: namely, that the majority of participants who worked in male-dominated industries or who had attended coeducational schools resolutely asserted that those organizations did not or had not discriminated against women. It was also present in the adamancy of many participants that they did not identify as feminists because they associate the term with such “unfeminine” qualities as hating men or desiring to be free of their families. Conversely, the women who did identify as feminist and were intentionally challenging what they viewed as patriarchal or female-negative systems also claimed their identities as “rural” and “woman” as valuable resources.