ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on rurality to illustrate how a feminist consciousness enhances social work community development practice, based as it is on ideals of gender equality and social justice for all community members, not just those who hold recognisable power and influence. It examines broad processes of change underway in rural Australia and their implications for a feminist reading of social work. Community development is a critical role for social workers but is often ill-defined and its purpose misunderstood. Good practice is dependent on an awareness of the ideological, political and social factors that shape communities in ways that are fundamentally gendered. Rural areas are undergoing significant changes due in large part to external factors beyond the control of the people who live there. The social impacts of restructuring and climate uncertainty have been made more difficult by neo-liberal policies that effectively have left rural communities to fend for themselves.
