Making Community in the Wilderness: A Case Study of Women's Land's Throughout the United States

• Main Author: Ayers, Katherine Elizabeth Ruth
• Other Authors: Sociology
• Format: Others
• Published: Virginia Tech 2021
• Subjects: Lesbian; Gender; Aging; Diversity; Organizations; Care; Fieldwork; Intentional Communities
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10919/101972

Over the summer and fall of 2018, I spent time at nine of the lands and two women's-only music festivals and interviewed 39 women. This dissertation is the result of those interviews and my copious field notes. Chapter one frames the question of community sociologically and examines why the lands often remained homogenous even though their goal was that every woman was welcome to come visit and live. It contrasts the lands to women's-only music festivals, which often included diverse women. Chapter two shows how lands not designed to support old women slowly, and unintentionally, become retirement communities. Families of choice, often consisting of the other women living in the community, help the women who need extra assistance, but within limits set by an unaddressed ageism. The lands are at risk if they fail to attract younger members. Chapter three explores the mutual mistrust between the women's land members and the academic community that I found myself navigating as I completed this project. It details the compromises all feminist communities must make to sustain themselves, and explores how the tension caused by my participation in both the women's lands and academic feminist communities yielded insights into both. === Doctor of Philosophy === As part of the American second wave feminist movement, a new group of radical feminists emerged. Instead of trying to work within the system, as the feminists before them had done, they decided to create an alternative system as best they could. This dissertation project focuses on the current iteration of these lands; to do this research I spent time at nine of the lands and two women's-only music festivals and interviewed 39 women during the summer of 2018. Part of creating these alternative systems included buying land in rural spaces across the United States and setting up new communities not beholden to any current way of doing things. A major ethos of their communities was that all women were welcome, regardless of race, economic, class, dis/ability, or other identities. The first chapter examines how, despite the women's best intentions, these spaces were and continue to remain today, homogenous, and contrasts the lands with other feminist organizations and women's-only music festivals that were able to diversify. Chapter two explores how women are aging on the lands and the struggles the women are facing in attracting new members. The last chapter examines the mutual mistrust of me I found within both the feminist and academic communities, how I navigated that mistrust, and ultimately that mistrust offers insights into how both communities make compromises to sustain themselves.