The Rock Where We Stand

The author reports on participatory research with women activists she met through the Bay St. George Women's Council in 1992, in the context of societal changes in the 1980s-90s and Newfoundland's reputation as a have-not province.

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Bay St. George in western Newfoundland is a region characterized by a boom and bust economy and shaped by the establishment of the Earnest Harmon American Airforce Base. This ethnography explores how women at the Bay St. George Women's Council deal specifically with the issues of single motherhood, child sexual abuse, and domestic violence, and examines the interplay of feminist and Newfoundland identification among these individuals. Drawing on 14 months of participant observation and interviews with women at the Council, The author provides a specifically Canadian contribution to ethno-cultural studies, grass-roots activism, and feminist studies. The research successfully situates the particular concerns and political activism of these women in this rural region of Canada within the larger context of economic restructuring and neoliberal economic and social policies that continue to marginalize women in Canada and around the world.