The Ambiguous Experience of Motherhood in the Western Bohemian Countryside: Exploring Rural Gender Inequalities Through the Framework of Precarity

Author:
Publisher website
Google Scholar
Abstract
Perspectives from Central and Eastern Europe rarely find their way into the debate on rural gender inequality. In this article, I aim to mitigate this imbalance by exploring everyday arrangements of women with dependent children in a peripheralised rural region of the Czech Republic. Using an expanded framework of precarity that integrates different spheres of work, I demonstrate that in the spatial context studied, motherhood increases the social disadvantage women face while simultaneously constituting an important field of female agency. I further show that in order to identify room for manoeuvre within configurations of insecurity the whole life‐situation of women must be taken into consideration. My findings add to a nuanced and context‐sensitive understanding of gender inequality in the European countryside, in particular by highlighting the field‐specific interaction of low‐wage economy, gendered division of work and mobility, and concepts of rural childhood, good (grand)parenting and self‐sufficiency. The study draws upon semi‐structured interviews and ethnographic research.
Funding Information
  • Grantová Agentura České Republiky (GC18-05704J)

This publication has 41 references indexed in Scilit: