Bun-baking mums and subverters: The agency of network participants in a Rural Swedish county

SynopsisDuring the 1990s rural Swedish women positioned themselves as women and formed networks aimed at addressing various local and most often gender-related problems that limited their quality of life. The aim of this article is to empirically describe and theoretically discuss the idea of agency in the context of women's social practices of networking and to examine how the participants either reproduce or transform the gendered structures that shape them. The empirical data for this article consist primarily of discussions with focus groups and interviews with network participants. Through interpretations, a pattern of gendered power-relations was illuminated, which both influenced and constrained the participants' activities. We have interpreted the participants' networking agency as acts of protest against everything that limits their living conditions. As women develop strategies through networking, their resistance seems to become increasingly significant for the ongoing transformations of the gender order.