ABSTRACT
Farming and its relation to gender and mental health have predominately focused on enumerating male farmer suicides and examining the contexts and conditions that lead to possibilities for suicide. There is a growing interrogation of the concept of farming and “mental health” in sociology and social geography, however, the focus of such research continues to centre male farmers. Women who farm, farm workers, and Indigenous farmers remain on the margins of studies of farming and mental health. This chapter aims to draw attention to distress in farming and explore how distress is gendered by examining the gendering of suicide and by questioning the notion of monolithic masculinities in crisis. It brings attention to farmers and farm workers as intersectional and diverse beings who using the terminology preferred in this chapter “distressed” socio-bodies are shaped by their encounters within political, economic, social and cultural spheres. The chapter recommends new research directions and methods to examine distress, gender, and farming.
