Defining Work: Gender, Professional Work, And the Case of Rural Clergy

For rural clergy, the lines between private life and professional life can blur. Their offices are often in their homes, parishioners are also neighbours and professional duties are intertwined with emotional care-giving and voluntary activity. In a society that defines work as paid, public and intellectual, the ambiguity inherent in the life of the rural clergy poses unique challenges. Muriel Mellow considers how men and women in this occupational group conceptualise 'work' in the context of their unique circumstances and shows how their experience raises questions for feminist theories of work. Based on interviews with forty rural Protestant clergy, Mellow argues that male and female clergy challenge gendered definitions of work by focusing on obligation, context, visibility, and time. She also considers how clergy's work is shaped by the rural setting, arguing that we must consider how work is "placed" as well as gendered.