Standing Our Ground. Joyce M. Barry
institutions, including the labor market and the state, are structured by gender.”40 The authors also point out that gender is just one structure of social practice, with race, ethnicity, class, and nationality being considered additional social structures.41 However, they emphasize that the ways in which gender (or other distinguishing social markers) is structured in a particular time or place “reflects the relative dominance of different social interests.”42 Many women live in precarious socioeconomic conditions, and much work is needed to create institutional change that can provide women with greater opportunities. In the end, the Appalachian Regional Commission report does not suggest possible solutions to persistent problems in central Appalachia. The study ends by concisely reiterating the troubling information and lists several forthcoming reports aimed at analyzing demographic changes noted in the 2000 census. While the ARC report fails to sufficiently analyze gender difference, other studies focus explicitly on current conditions of women in West Virginia.
In 2002, the Institute for Women’s Policy Research released The Status of Women in West Virginia report, which relies on data from 1997 through 2002 in assessing the social, political, and economic conditions of women in the state.43 Barbara J. Howe, cochair for the West Virginia Advisory Committee, asserts, “The report sets forth a blueprint of where we are and where we might go to improve the status of women in the state. And if we do not address the obstacles that are keeping women from achieving their fullest potential, we will not progress as a state, for women are the majority (51.4 percent) of the population of the state.”44 Following the policy guidelines of the 1995 United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, the aims of these state-by-state studies is to thoroughly assess the status of women and provide solutions for improving their lives. The Status of Women in West Virginia report provides grades in these distinct areas: political participation, employment and earnings, social and economic autonomy, reproductive rights, and health and well-being. Feminist researchers contend that overall, West Virginia ranked forty-eighth in the nation in women’s social and economic autonomy.45 In fact, out of the five areas of assessment, West Virginia received only one passing grade, a B–, in reproductive rights. The state received D and F grades in all other categories.46 The report states that “almost 19 percent of West Virginia women lack health insurance, and almost 17 percent live below the poverty line. . . . Women in the state have the lowest levels of educational attainment in the country.”47 Furthermore, this study revealed a challenging economic situation for most women in this part of the country:
Women in West Virginia participate in the workforce much less often, earn significantly lower wages, and work as managers or professionals much less frequently than women in the nation as a whole. Their earnings in relation to men’s are also lower than in most of the country. These factors combine to place West Virginia last in the nation on the employment and earnings composite index. The state receives a grade of F in this area, reflecting the inequality women experience compared with men.48
Not only do West Virginia women fall below the national average in these categories, overall they received the worst grades of all the Appalachian states.49 After revealing the scores for West Virginia women in each area, Howe baldly claims, “If statistics do not lie, the status of women in West Virginia is terrible. . . . Except for the reproductive rights score, which is a good score only if one is pro-choice, West Virginia would undoubtedly rank as one of the worst states in the country for women.”50
While the Appalachian Regional Studies Commission and Status of Women in West Virginia reports are based on socioeconomic data from the late 1990s and early 2000s, recent reports reveal findings consistent with these earlier figures.51 Most of the studies assessing material conditions in West Virginia suggest basic political and economic reforms to improve the status of those suffering in the state. For example, the Women’s Policy Research Center, in its state-by-state analysis, claims West Virginia women would benefit from “stronger enforcement of equal opportunity laws, better political representation, adequate and affordable child care, stronger poverty reduction programs, and other policies that would help improve their status.”52 These studies, particularly those highlighting differences based on gender, race, nation, and so forth, provide a fuller picture of life in this troubled region. However, most policy studies fail to examine the root causes of the adverse socioeconomic conditions facing most West Virginians. While socioeconomic assessments are useful tools in understanding the strengths and weaknesses of West Virginia, a more transformative vision exposes the underlying causes of such immiseration.
The material and structural problems of rural central Appalachia are attributed to what Jeff Goodell calls the “resource curse,”53 a designation that denotes a pattern of social, political, and economic problems in areas rich in natural resources. Goodell claims that “by conventional economic logic,” places such as the West Virginia coalfields, the Niger Delta, Venezuela, Colombia, or the Democratic Republic of the Congo should have higher standards of living because of resource riches inherent in the natural environment of these areas.54 In reality, these resources “curse” the land and the people in the following ways:
Control over natural resources allows a few people to obtain tremendous wealth, giving them huge sway over the economic fortunes of the state and offering enormous opportunity for self-indulgence and corruption. At best, economies that are dependent on natural resources are unstable. When coal or gas prices are up, they’re awash in cash; when prices fall, they struggle to keep the lights on in hospitals and gunfire from breaking out in the streets. This kind of economic yo-yoing leads to budgetary and financial fiascoes, in addition to leaving the government open to economic blackmail by the extraction industries: If you don’t let me mine that mountain, I’ll pull out and leave you all in poverty.55
Many anti-MTR activists I have spoken to over the years are well aware of these political-economic arrangements and their effects on the human and nonhuman environments of West Virginia. As such, they make links between environmental problems caused by coal operations in the state and the iniquitous social and economic conditions of West Virginia, realizing that the fundamental problems of central Appalachia must be identified as they work for transformative change in the region. This knowledge is evident in Coal River Mountain Watch’s late codirector Judy Bonds’s claim that “we’re trying to help the state. We’re trying to push the state forward, you know, to stop the destruction and to diversify the economy. We should have diversified our economy many, many, many years ago, and that’s the problem. The coal industry controls everything.”56
Omission of the iniquitous political and economic arrangements of West Virginia in most public policy assessments, particularly of the way the coal industry wields power over the state at the expense of its citizens and the natural environment, is unfortunate. The connections between the hegemony of Big Coal and the social, economic, and environmental conditions in West Virginia are more explanatory when assessing the area’s problems. The deleterious influence of this elephant is a reality neatly summarized in the popular anti-MTR activist sign “Coal Keeps West Virginia Poor.” This slogan is posted on an outdoor picnic shelter on Kayford Mountain, home of Larry Gibson and the site of the annual gathering of the Keepers of the Mountain, a network of people committed to ending mountaintop removal coal mining. This sign is also displayed at various direct action protests in West Virginia. Many activists cite the political system, which protects coal interests, as the biggest obstacle to creating real change in the region. This client-state relationship established so long ago still informs the political-economic arrangements of West Virginia today, to the detriment of state citizens and the Appalachian Mountains.
The coal industry has owned and controlled the state since the rise of industrialization in the nineteenth century, when coal owners moved in and seized control. Shirley Stewart Burns says, “The legacy of these acquisitions resounds today when more than two-thirds of the state’s non-public land has been gobbled up by absentee landowners.”57 Focusing her study on the nine coalfield counties of West Virginia, the most distressed areas in all of Appalachia, Burns concludes that “since outside interests hold such a large amount of land in the nine-county sub-region, economic diversification is nearly non-existent there.”58 This thoroughly established pattern of ownership has resulted