On being a nice country girl and an academic feminist: using reflexivity in rural social research

This paper uses a study of womenʹs participation in the Australian sugar industry to illustrate and critique the process and usefulness of reflexivity in rural research. I begin by situating the use of reflexivity within the feminist literature. Following this, I describe the way in which I used reflexivity to examine different identities I inhabited throughout the study. These identities were: ‘farmers’, daughter’, ‘Italian-Australian’, ‘nice country girl’ and ‘woman’. The paper concludes with a brief reflexive examination of some of the challenges I face in taking up a new identity—that of ‘academic feminist’ in rural sociology.