World Rural Women Day
Report from South Africa
In South Africa, women's days that are celebrated most are those relevant to the urban elite such as Women's day, Valentines day, Mothers day, etc. As from 2001, my organization,  The Rural Action Committee of Mpumalanga Province (TRAC-MP), a land rights NGO together with other NGOs in South Africa, celebrated this day. More

World Rural Women's Day:  Front-line Feminism in the Village - Nova Scotia
In Melvern Square it is still possible to hold a Village Tea. . .At first, the women contacted to bake for a World Rural Women's Day Tea were confused. Full story
 

For years, study after study has put newspaper front-page mentions of women in a range of between 20 percent and 25 percent, with women having less visibility in business and sports sections, somewhat more in metro and lifestyle pages. Women's Enews
 

AGRICULTURE

Latest Census on Agriculture

Women Operators - Selected Operator Characteristics: 2002 and 1997 .pdf file - requires Adobe Acrobat)

Obstacles to rural health care
From National Rural Health Association
"The obstacles faced by health care providers and patients in rural areas are vastly different than those in urban areas. Rural Americans face a unique combination of factors that create disparities in health care not found in urban areas. Economic factors, cultural and social differences, educational shortcomings, lack of recognition by legislators and the sheer isolation of living in remote rural areas all conspire to impede rural Americans in their struggle to lead a normal, healthy life. Some of these factors, and their effects, are listed below.

    * Only about ten percent of physicians practice in rural America despite the fact that one-fourth of the population lives in these areas. **

    * Rural residents are less likely to have employer-provided health care coverage or prescription drug coverage, and the rural poor are less likely to be covered by Medicaid benefits than their urban counterparts.

    * Although only one-third of all motor vehicle accidents occur in rural areas, two-thirds of the deaths attributed to these accidents occur on rural roads.**

    * Rural residents are nearly twice as likely to die from unintentional injuries other than motor vehical accidents than are urban residents. Rural residents are also at a significantly higher risk of death by gunshot than urban residents.

    * Rural residents tend to be poorer. On the average, per capita income is $7,417 lower than in urban areas, and rural Americans are more likely to live below the poverty level. The disparity in incomes is even greater for minorities living in rural areas. Nearly 24% of rural children live in poverty.

    * There are 2,157 Health Professional Shortage Areas (HPSA’s) in rural and frontier areas of all states and US territories compared to 910 in urban areas.**

    * Abuse of alcohol and use of smokeless tobacco is a significant problem among rural youth. The rate of DUI arrests is significantly greater in non-urban counties. Forty percent of rural 12th graders reported using alcohol while driving compared to 25% of their urban counterparts. Rural eighth graders are twice as likely to smoke cigarettes (26.1% versus 12.7% in large metro areas.) **

    * Anywhere from 57 to 90 percent of first responders in rural areas are volunteers. **

    * There are 60 dentists per 100,000 population in urban areas versus 40 per 100,000 in rural areas**

    * Cerebrovascular disease was reportedly 1.45 higher in non-Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) than in MSAs.**

    * Hpertension was also higher in rural than urban areas (101.3 per 1,000 individuals in MSAs and 128.8 per 1,000 individuals in non-MSAs.)**

    * Twenty percent of nonmetropolitan counties lack mental health services versus five percent of metropolitan counties. In 1999, 87 percent of the 1,669 Mental Health Professional Shortage Areas in theUnited States were in non-metroploitan counties and home to over 30 million people **

    * The suicide rate among rural men is significantly higher than in urban areas, particularly among adult men and children. The suicide rate among rural women is escalating rapidly and is approaching that of men.**

    * Medicare payments to rural hospitals and physicians are dramatically less than those to their urban counterparts for equivalent services. This correlates closely with the fact that more than 470 rural hospitals have closed in the past 25 years.

    * Medicare patients with acute myocardial infarction (AMI) who were treated in rural hospitals were less likely than those treated in urban hospitals to receive recommended treatments and had significantly higher adjusted 30-day post AMI death rates from all causes than those in urban hospitals. ***

    * Rural residents have greater transportation difficulties reaching health care providers, often travelling great distances to reach a doctor or hospital.

    * Death and serious injury accidents account for 60 percent of total rural accidents versus only 48 percent of urban. One reason for this increased rate of morbidity and mortality is that in rural areas, prolonged delays can occur between a crash, the call for EMS, and the arrival of an EMS provider. Many of these delays are related to increased travel distances in rural areas and personnel distribution across the response area. National average response times from motor vehicle accident to EMS arrival in rural areas was 18 minutes, or eight minutes greater than in urban areas.
Complete report and footnotes: National Rural Health Association

2004 Rural Women's Health Conference

National Rural Women's Health Conference 2002 Presentations
Recordings and print versions of all of the conference presentations are located on this site.

The Behavioral Health Care Needs of Rural Women
"Thirty percent of American women live in rural regions, but attention to their unique behavioral health concerns has been largely unaddressed by the professional literature." 
The complete report

Women's Well-Being Varies Dramatically by State
Women's Enews
pesticides may be to blame.

Rural America & Welfare Reform

The Importance of Place in Welfare Reform: Common Challenges for Central Cities and Remote-Rural Areas (from RUPRI)

Metro-Rural Differences:
After Welfare Reform

Poverty and Welfare Among Rural Female-Headed Families Before and After PRWORA 

Rural Poverty At A Glance
Rural Development Research Report No. (RDRR100) 6 pp, July 2004 
"This publication provides the most recent information on poverty trends and demographic characteristics of the rural poor for use in developing policies and programs to assist rural people and their communities."

Gender differences
"In nonmetro areas, 16.6 percent of the people in male-headed, single-adult families are poor, while the poverty rate is 37.1 percent for members of female-headed families."

"The poverty rate for people living in
female-headed families is 10 percentage points greater in nonmetro areas than in metro areas."

Race and ethnicity 
"According to the 2000 Census, racial and ethnic minorities constitute 17 percent of the nonmetro population, with nonmetro minority populations growing in all 50 States. Overall U.S. poverty rates are higher for minorities than for non-Hispanic Whites. This racial disparity is even more marked when considering rural poverty rates and other dimensions of well-being, such as education and depth of poverty.

"More than one out of every four nonmetro Hispanics, Blacks, and Native Americans live in poverty.
The nonmetro poverty rates in 2002 for non-Hispanic Blacks (33 percent) and Native Americans (35 percent) were more than three times the nonmetro poverty rate for non-Hispanic Whites (11 percent). The rate for Hispanics (27 percent) was more than twice as high. 

"Sixty-eight percent of nonmetro Hispanics who are poor have less than a high school education, compared with 40 percent of nonmetro non-Hispanic Whites who are poor.

"Fifty-two percent of nonmetro Native Americans who are poor have incomes that are less than half of the poverty line.

"Poverty rates for non-Hispanic Blacks and Native Americans are more than 10 percentage points higher in nonmetro areas than in metro areas, the largest gap among minority population groups."

The complete report (.pdf file - must have Adobe Acrobat)
To order a free copy of the report

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