"So what can I do to support myself ?" Ella asks me. "I have no education and at fifty-seven years of age, I have no job skills beyond driving a grain truck. But worse than that, I have no self-confidence to find work, even if it were available in the dying village."

So Ella is reduced to asking her husband for money, dependent upon him for an allowance.

Where can women like Ella, women who live in isolation in rural Canada, go for support? I want to say: "Find a group with whom you can share your story." But after years of learned self-sufficiency and isolation, it is often difficult for farm women to share personal family issues. How can Ella share herself openly and honestly when she fears the judgments of other people? Would other women think that she was mentally ill? Would they tell her she "shouldn't feel that way"?

Many people believe that farm families look after one another. And in many instances this is true. But the spiraling stress that comes from farm life is felt doubly by the woman who must often cope both with her own stress, and with the abuse that may be misdirected at her and her children by the male farmer. So to whom can the older farm woman turn for support?

Unfortunately, not to her neighbours. The stereotype of farm neighbors helping neighbors has worn thin with current trends in agriculture. Farm economics have forced farmers to compete cruelly with their neighbours for scarce markets. Besides, depopulation and the trend towards larger farms have significantly increased the distance between neighbours.

Solidarity among farm women is not as common as we might hope. Younger women neighbours are often employed off the farm and experience a vastly different lifestyle from the older farm woman. The older woman's peers may be unskilled at communicating or they may be threatened into silence about "private matters" by their husbands.

Forced to be socially "independent", the older farm woman is often forced to be economically "dependent" on her husband. Although she has worked the land alongside him, it is the male farmer who is considered master. He can, and often does, make important decisions with no input from the older woman, she who has worked tirelessly without pay, without pension and without recognition.

We might ask in frustration why women like Ella don't upgrade their education so that they can get off-farm work like their younger neighbours? Thankfully, educational opportunities are increasingly available through satellite programs.

But these programs require sophisticated and expensive equipment. Regional colleges are found in seven areas of Saskatchewan alone, but the nearest to Ella, for example, is about 140 kilometers away. And her husband still holds the keys.