(Re)Constructing Gender: White, Working-Class Women and Trauma

• In Event: 2254 - Culture and Narrative

Abstract

In rural, working-class areas, men’s labor market participation has historically determined gender relations, casting women as traditional wives and mothers. As labor market opportunities have worsened for working-class men, family patterns have shifted and this traditional pathway to gendered identities have been altered. Coal Brook, a town in Central Pennsylvania, is a heavily deindustrialized and poverty-stricken area that has been ravaged by the opioid epidemic and bears little resemblance to the booming town it once was. Using in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 37 white women in the coal region of Pennsylvania, this article explores how women (re)construct a gendered identity when the traditional ways of performing gender are unavailable. Trauma emerges as a mechanism for defining their lives and who they are as women. Three major narratives are revealed: self-empowerment, ignoring trauma, and persistent suffering. These themes indicate that women have different coping strategies for similar kinds of trauma, and these strategies can be either productive or unproductive.

Author

• Kaitlyn Smeraldo, The Ohio State University