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In the second decade of the twenty-first century, women continue to be dramatically underrepresented in elective office in the United States. Two decades after the much-ballyhooed "Year of the Woman" of 1992, the United States ranks below most advanced democracies. Here we revisit a question posed over a decade ago: "Why do women so rarely serve in midwestern state legislatures?" Our investigation is framed around three sets of factors: (1) electoral systems, (2) the political opportunity structure, and (3) individual candidates' attributes. Drawing on data from 2010 general election candidates in the upper Midwest, we test for the latter two sets of factors. Our analysis confirms other studies that women are just as likely to be elected as men. However, we found fewer women serve in public office because fewer women are candidates. We conclude with a proposal to integrate research from feminist scholars to unravel probable reasons for this lack of participation.

In the face of on-going population loss and despite all dire warnings to the contrary, the clear persistence of certain rural communities continues in unexpected areas of the Great Plains. It is this persistence that is becoming the most difficult element to explain. Thus, this paper turns the traditional research question on its head and asks why some deep rural communities endure. As a result, we introduce a new concept in rural studies-community persistence-and, consequently, we advance a theoretical model to explain why some communities survive without natural amenities or adjacency to a metropolis. Our concept of persistence attempts to answer the question, "why are you still out there?" when most of society has given up on deep rural populations. We offer a sharp distinction between community persistence and the much-discussed concept of community sustainability. Moreover, our theory incorporates place-based sociological, economic and political factors associated with community persistence. In particular, our integrated theory suggests that persistent communities develop dense social networks, high human capital and deliberative civic engagement so that these towns stood out from the crowded field of contenders for sub-regional prominence. Since we are embarking on a long-term investigation about deep rural communities, this paper offers a preliminary analysis using existing data sources. Our unit of analysis is the county and our sample includes all deep rural counties in Montana, North Dakota, and South Dakota. We employ two measures of persistence: per capita income and civilian labor force. Both our initial analysis of the ten most persistent counties and a more rigorous test of the entire sample indicate a high proportion of college graduates, high population density, and competitive political parties are most closely associated with persistent communities. Our findings suggest that a broad mix of social, economic, and political factors are essential to community persistence in deep rural areas. We connect our findings to rural development policy efforts and also discuss avenues for future studies that build on our theory.

This research note revisits the question of rural persistence, which was first brought to light in this journal by Redlin et al. (2010). We follow Redlin et al's example by employing county-level data and seek to identify small towns that are surviving to explain their persistence. Our effort to replicate their results begins with the collection of the data anew, but we also include two additional states and incorporate a time dimension. By using Census data from 2000 only, Redlin et al. applied a static approach to test their hypothesis. In this study, we collect data from 1990 as well as 2000 to explore the time dimension of rural persistence. Our findings indicate that rural persistence is a dynamic rather than a static process. First, human capital systematically affects rural persistence. Second, changes in human capital affect rural persistence much more significantly than a stock of each measure at an earlier point in time. This result is encouraging; it suggests that no matter a community's starting point in human capital, efforts towards community survival can be successful. Increases in any of our independent variables affect small town persistence more than the initial stock of any of them. Moreover, our results produce differences among the states, specifically Montana and Wyoming from the Dakotas, which indicate that future research efforts in rural persistence should explore political structure. Secondly, we suggest a grounded theory approach which develops data from a focused effort on a handful of rural communities.

This edited book offers a detailed examination of the interstices of ruralities and sexualities over a number of different countries, focusing a geographical lens on the relationships between sexualities and the spaces and tropes of rural life. Collectively, the contributors reveal how sexual identities, imaginaries and experiences are understood and practiced in relation to intimacies, institutions, mobilities, communities, and economic and social modes of production and consumption