I’ll feel secure living in rural Saskatchewan when there are more nurses and more money for nurses.
When quality becomes more important than money.
When we have stopped taking away from rural health care and we have been given something in return.
When the city gets it, we get it.
When all women’s work is valued.
When farm incomes provide a reasonable reflection of the value of the labor.
When occupation and health safety is taught on my farm.
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These are not my words. These are the words of farm women who gathered in Davidson, Sask., just over a year ago at a rural women’s health conference.
Sixty-one people attended the conference, which was intended to explore the health needs of rural women and form an action plan. That plan would be used to inform “each other, our communities and our governments about rural women’s health issues.”
The proceedings are now being circulated to conference participants and to other interested people.
They make good reading, including the papers presented at sessions on caregivers’ stress and home care, access to mental health services, violence against women and children and rural child care.
All these papers talk about problems facing not just rural women but rural families.
The most powerful parts of the proceedings are the parts where the rural women speak, including the final section when rural women tell when they will feel secure.
As well, when keynote speaker rural psychologist Nikki Gerrard who, in her paper, We’re always falling through the cracks, quotes rural women she has met during her research.
“People have been stressed so long they think it’s life,” the rural women say.
“We’re dying for lack of knowledge.”
“We don’t mind starting from basics because we know what we don’t know.”
“I’m going to say to the next researcher: My hourly wage is $50 an hour. Make an appointment.”
Gerrard ended her presentation with the following: “Rural women are knowledgeable and articulate about their health issues. We know what we want. By learning about each other’s lives and our health issues, and by becoming activists and advocates at all levels from consumers to policy, education to research, we must build bridges and provide safety nets so that we can we can help stop what one woman describes as we’re always falling through the cracks.”
