Women and the Rural Policy Process in England

Abstract

One of the key observations that has been made by those involved in research on women and public sector planning is that the adoption of policies aimed at addressing women’s needs in Britain is spatially constituted. Work by Halford (1989) and Little (1994a, 1994b) in the late 1980s and early 1990s found that women’s initiatives in terms of both specific planning policies and broader organizational structures, were concentrated in major urban areas — particularly in the main metropolitan authorities. In 1989, for example, 85% of all local authority Women’s Committees in the UK were located in towns and cities (see Halford, 1989). Similarly, of the 71 local authority planning departments that had adopted policies ‘for’ women by the early 1990s, only 13 were reported by District Councils outside the main metropolitan and other urban areas. Moreover, while a few rural authorities claimed to have introduced policies or initiatives directed towards women’s needs, these were generally isolated, one off instances rather than sustained strategies. Where it has happened, planning for women in rural areas has, it would seem on the basis of this evidence, been about reacting to particular problems experienced by women rather than working towards a sustained program of policies aimed at reducing gender inequality.

Article Footnote

This infonnation was gathered from a survey of local planning authorities in England undertaken in 1991. The research investigated the perfonnance of local planning authorities in relation to the provision of ‘women’s initiatives’ within the fonnal planning process and also looked at the attitudes of planners to gender inequality in the fonnulation and outcome of planning policy.For more detail on this research see Little, 1994a; 1994b).