As co-applicant and Coordinator of a large 4-year research programme with 8 projects working with and for rural women’s organizations on their issues, I used mapping with all groups to help clarify the issues, focus and direction of their research. I led and mapped with two teams to delve further into rural women’s poverty and employment, municipal funding and federal policy development.
A highlight was being invited to deliver a briefing on rural women’s poverty in Canada to Non Governmental Organizations at the United Nations (UN) in New York City.
- One organization – a women’s employment centre in a rural town – had provided women with skills training and resources for years in a rural county, and a recent reorganization of services that focussed on colleges’ ‘essential skills’ training had suddenly excluded them as service deliverers. We interviewed the new amalgamated ‘service hub’ agencies, and mapped what we learned and explored ways to include them in services delivery. In that project, partnering with a group focussed on rural women’s poverty that wanted to secure municipal funding to help rural women, we co-produced a guide on municipal government and map on going to council.
- In another project with the women’s caucus of a national farm organization, we explored how to change how federal agriculture policy that was eliminating family farms was made. A new agricultural policy development process was in progress. We first met with a group of women farmers from across the country about their work and issues, then interviewed their large grassroots organization, think tanks, consultants and policy advisors to the government on how they accessed the process. Our team included a senior analyst in the former Farm Women’s Bureau of the federal government, so we met with a federal policy developer involved in the process. Our maps showed the blatant discrimination in the government’s consultations for policy development.
- A workshop with the New Brunswick farm women’s association to address their local issues resulted in them developing an initiative to change provincial highway signage regulation to assist them to sell at the farm gate and engage churches and community organizations in tourism local food promotion.
