Encyclopedia of the Great Plains

GENDER AND SENSE OF PLACE

Women and men experience the Great Plains in very different ways. The characteristics they find appealing or repellent, the reasons they have for being there, even the terms they use to describe Plains life and landscape are distinctly different, almost as if they were describing different worlds. Women often praise the interpersonal qualities of small-town life in the region, such as the closeness of families, the closer intergenerational ties, and the intimacy and helpfulness of the community. In contrast, men typically laud the Plains as an ideal context for work and play, citing independence, opportunity, and freedom to work their own schedules. Women understand the merits men see in Plains life. They describe the flexibility and freedom men enjoy in their work, and how the "frontier" qualities of the Plains appeal to men, but they usually consider these the exclusive domain of males. In fact, many women regard the Plains as primarily a man's place, and they feel more restricted to traditional female roles in work, home life, and community than they would in other places. Plains society does not readily acknowledge it when women share in traditional men's work. For instance, many women work full-time on the family farm but rarely are recognized as farmers.

Men are much more likely than women to find the Plains physically appealing. They get an expansive feeling from the open landscape and regard the remoteness and emptiness of the Plains as a source of welcome solitude, privacy, and freedom from disturbance. Women, in contrast, frequently deride the emptiness and treelessness, report feeling "vulnerable" or "exposed" in the open, and describe the landscape with foreboding terms such as "barren," "desolate," "edge of the earth," or "vast nothingness." They often experience what men affectionately call "solitude" as social isolation, cultural deprivation, and domestic inconvenience.

Distinctions are even more pronounced between men and women who immigrate from outside the Plains. Immigrant men adapt readily to Plains life and typically embrace an exhilarating sense of widened horizons and expanded possibilities. Immigrant women are much more likely to complain of restrictive gender roles, oppressive social norms, social and emotional isolation, and a lack of professional or recreational opportunities. Even after decades of residence, they can suffer from culture and landscape shock, and they often admit to pining for their original homes and richer landscapes.

These responses are especially intriguing in light of the nearly identical gender distinctions that appear in accounts of early European American settlers, especially regarding the landscape. The forces that drew men to, and repelled women from, the Plains in the nineteenth century apparently still operate today. This could be a culturally imprinted contrast in sensitivity or aesthetics, but its endurance suggests that a gender distinction may exist that is deeper than the cultural milieu. Perhaps, as some research suggests, men have an innate preference for open landscapes, and women for shelter. This question may never be answered, but its emergence in the Great Plains offers insight into the relationship between gender and sense of place.

Cary W. de Wit University of Alaska Fairbanks

de Wit, Cary W. "Women's Sense of Place on the American High Plains." Great Plains Quarterly 21 (2001): 29–44.