
          Women in the Rural South: Toward Economic Equity
          By Lilly, LeslieLeslie Lilly
          Vol. 8, No. 2, 1986, pp. 5, 8-11
          
          There is a sense of place and time about the South that distorts
even as it amplifies its outward character to the nation. We are a
region of great diversity even as we pursue the rejection of that
diversity. We market our stereotypes at the same time we deplore
them.
          We are haunted by an historical wishfulness to act and think in
terms of privilege.
          Our geography is that of rural and small town communities. Our
economic progress has been confounded by this ruralness. We have been
used as a hinterland--our timber, our coal, our minerals, our water,
our agriculture, and even our people exploited as export
commodities.
          Our political experience is distinguished by a rigid
conservatism. Its most ardent expression has been the need to defend
and explain about the South. Generations 

of racial role-playing have
left a terrible legacy of poverty and powerlessness among the
disfranchised. The inertia is seductive. There is a hopelessness about
thinking that things can ever be any different. Our self-blame is
deeply ingrained. We are primarily a poor and working class people, a
people for whom change has meant hard, bitter, and often violent
confrontation.
          Proclamations demanding rights for women found few initial
supporters in the South. What movement there was had a delicate nature
due to the hothouse of its growth--an old confederacy of geographic
circumstance, steeped in a unique regional history, dominated by a
rural and agrarian political economy. If the "southern question" had
troubled national politics for more than a century, it was no less a
barrier to women working to improve the status of women. From the
earliest era of activism in behalf of women's rights, to the more
recent struggle to win southern states' ratification of the Equal
Rights Amendment, the enrollment of a southern constituency has been
problematic.
          Ironically it seems that political support for women's equity in
the South could not be pursued on the basis of equity. To have done so
would have raised an issue that is still controversial: to whom is
equity entitled? The implications of this issue are nothing short of
revolutionary. That racism should overtake the vision for universal
equity was preordained in the South. Alliances across race and
privilege were divided by political tactics that required the
oppressed to settle first on which oppress-

sion was of greater priority
in the determination of specific reforms.
          There is one lesson to be learned from this history. Racism,
classism, and sexism mean that women always lose. This reality is
nowhere more stark than in the South. Women's historical inheritance
is economic subjugation. Their children must necessarily share in this
experience since their role of women as bearers and caretakers of
children has not significantly changed.
          But it isn't as though women haven't fought injustice. Women have a
history of struggle as leaders, fighting to end slavery and lynching,
as workers in the labor movement, as citizens fighting for franchise,
as advocates against child labor, as organizers to achieve civil
rights, as supporters of social welfare reforms, as entrepreneurs in
development, as voices in behalf of global peace and justice. Racism
and sexism are not mutually exclusive, and privilege cannot substitute
for the right of self-determination. We came to know this about
slavery. We are only now beginning to know this about women.
          We are an organization devoted to this struggle. We believe
economic equity is at the heart of the effort to achieve civil
equality in the United States. Civil equality has limited meaning in
the absence of economic resources sufficient to ensure basic quality
of life. The issue of economic equity is paramount for
women especially. Female-headed households are the fastest-growing
segment of the poverty populations in this country. Children are
carried on their mothers' breasts throughout households that can't
adequately provide educational opportunity, food, shelter, clothing,
or health care. Gender, race, and class are the most powerful
ingredients in the formula which determines who shall be poor. The
final ingredient is geography. In the South and Appalachia, there are
few who enjoy escape from the destiny that their birth to this
equation implies.
          We believe that this report, Women of the Rural
South, will underscore the extent to which change must be
advocated. We believe that women have the burden of leadership in
calling for that change, and that their responsibility to do so is
clear. The problem of economic injustice is not solely a women's
issue, however, nor will resolution be achieved by women alone. But
there is a change of attitude that must be cultivated, and some
intellectual reckoning that must occur.
          Social movements cannot be sustained if they fail to support the
participation of women. Women cannot develop leadership nor mobilize
to follow leaders without recognition of the special responsibilities
they also have in regard to children. Poverty and vulnerability are
inherent in roles of dependency--forced or voluntary. Improvement to
the quality of life for all Americans and challenges to the causes and
sources of poverty cannot succeed in the absence of an analysis about
the economic and political status of those citizens for whom change is
being sought. Women of the Rural South is an attempt to provide the
anatomy of the problems women are facing in the rural South so that we
can more clearly understand the nature of the struggle before us, and
the depth of reform that will be required. Strategies to achieve
social and economic justice must explicitly recognize the political
economy of women if they are to succeed.
          And, if we do succeed? Ours is a vision for economic development in
the South that is inclusive of women and 

minorities. It is a vision
for an economy that is self-sustaining, and that has the capacity to
distribute the income necessary to enhance the quality of life
throughout our communities, but most especially among women and
minorities. It is development that inspires rejuvenation of the old
and innovation of the new, and a respect, regard, and appeciation for
the human resource upon which economic development depends. It is
development that is integrally rooted in a wider sphere, with
self-reliance at the heart of its purpose, and with education,
community, and independence as parts of its vision. In that spirit, we
call on: Policymakers to repudiate the century-old policy
of promoting economic growth on the cynical guarantee of low wages and
poverty among southern workers. Specifically, we urge them to:
          * Allocate fifty percent of state economic development funds to
projects benefitting primarily women, and additional funds to projects
benefitting people of color in direct proportion to their
representation in the state population.
          * Earmark a specific portion of economic development funds for
rural areas, directly proportionate to the distribution of the state
population.
          * Establish affirmative action requirements for the civil service
and for private contractors rendering services under contract with the
state. Initiate strong enforcement of laws guaranteeing
nondiscrimination in private and state workforces.
          * Arrange immediately for a job evaluation/comparable worth
analysis of the state and local civil service systems; and appropriate
the funding necessary to close the gaps between workers of different
race and gender who perform jobs requiring comparable skills and
responsibilities.
          * Establish a more favorable political climate in support of
working people, and repeal the right-to-work law in your state.
          * Bring public assistance payments, specifically AFDC, up to the
national average.
          * Subsidize locally-owned, quality child care in rural
communities.
          * Provide vocational education extension courses in rural areas
that currently lack opportunities for training, and actively recruit
women for nontraditional vocational courses.
          * Identify and actively recruit women into positions of policy and
decision making at every level.
          Grantmakers, especially those in the South, we ask you
to evaluate your present funding priorities according to criteria of
social responsibility, and to revise your policies
accordingly. Specifically, we urge you to:
          * Allocate at least fifty percent of your total annual budget to
projects that organize and empower the economically disadvantaged.
          * Allocate at least half of that amount to projects that address
the needs of women, particularly women of color.
          * Recruit women from the ranks of community leadership as staff
executive officers, board members, and trustees in philanthropic
endeavors.
          * Collaborate with women community leaders in a process that will
eliminate attitudes and beliefs that are barriers to working together
in addressing issues of poverty.
          * Develop peership with grantseekers on issues of strategy, and
build a process for mutual evaluation that reveals the strengths and
weaknesses in our collaborative attempts to foster change.
          Leaders of Southern Churches and Synagogues, we call
on you to speak out for economic justice, and to minister to the
economic needs of low-income people, especially women. Specifically,
we urge you to:
          * Educate your congregations as to the economic injustice
experienced by women and people of color in the South.
          * Provide food pantries, soup kitchens, shelter, transportation and
other services needed by the poor.
          * Provide active support for local efforts to organize and empower
women.
          * Encourage the leadership of women in all areas of religious
activity.
          * Build on the vision of liberation theology and apply it to the
responsibility of your church among the poor and disfranchised in your
own communities.
          Southern Education Institutions, we call on your
faculty, staff and trustees to incorporate the experiences and
contributions of women into all areas of the curriculum, and to
address the needs of women as students and as employees. Specifically,
we urge you to:
          * Hire faculty with expertise in women's studies, particularly in
the areas of southern working class women and women of color.
          * Evaluate existing curricula, especially in the social sciences
and humanities, as to their coverage of the experiences and
contributions of women and people of color.
          * Develop and implement new curricula to remedy identified
deficiencies.
          * Recruit women and minorities as students.
          * Seek scholarship funds and establish financial 

aid policies that
enable the attendance of low-income.
          * Establish and enforce strict affirmative action procedures for
hiring, salaries and promotion, including the granting of tenure,
among all faculty.
          * Arrange for an evaluation of the comparability of all staff jobs,
and revise pay scales according to the principle of comparable
worth.
          * Establish and enforce affirmative action procedures, hiring, and
promotion of staff.
          * Establish programs that make the educational, research and other
resources of your institution available to the local community,
expecially to low-income members, in order to serve needs that they
themselves identify.
          Finally, we call on Southern Women to come together across the
barriers that historically have divided us. Unite! Organize! This
report will justify your anger, and support your resolution to act. A
single voice can become a mighty shout in the presence of a shared
vision among women about what must be different in our lives. No one
else can "give" us equity or set us free! We have nothing to lose in
this struggle but our poverty and the diminishment we experience
because of our oppression. We are powerful and we are needed. Let your
children be your inspiration, your sisterhood be your sustenance, and
a movement for race and sex equity, your vision. We have generational
responsibility to uphold and the strength and capability to meet its
challenges. Stand up, reach out, and let the future unroll as if you
mattered. In this movement, every person counts!
          
            Leslie Lilly is executive director of the Southeast
Women's Employment Coalition. This essay is taken from an extensively
researched report: Women of the Rural South. For order
information see page 6.
          
        