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Local government is often characterised as being well‐placed to enact a successful agenda for environmental sustainability because of its closeness to both people and the environment. The purpose of this article is to examine the extent to which this assumption is correct in terms of local government environmental policies and programs in rural Australia. Using case studies with eight local government authorities in Queensland and New South Wales, the article documents three different positions on a continuum of environmental engagement. These are 'disengaged', 'moving towards engagement' and 'engaged'. The article concludes by arguing that the resource constraints facing rural local councils limit their capacity to engage with environmental management.

The literature on local government management of the environment in Australia has been limited in that it has typically focused on the urban sphere. In contrast, this paper places rurality at the centre of its inquiry. It uses data from fifteen case studies of rural local governments in Australia to identify the main factors that inhibit environmental management by rural councils. These barriers mobilise around four key themes. They are: capacity, commitment, co-ordination and community. While many of the issues raised in this study of non-urban shires have been described in previous research, the paper argues that the geographic location of the areas under investigation aggravate barriers to engaging sustainability initiatives. It is contended that rural local governments need to be resourced accordingly to ensure that natural resource management at the local government level in Australia is not compromised.

This paper describes a feminist doctoral research project undertaken to examine women's leadership in the Australian sugar industry. My purpose is three‐fold. Firstly, I seek to bridge the theoretical and the practical by documenting the 'what' and 'how' of a feminist research project within rural sociology. To do so, I explore five principles which guided my approach to undertaking a feminist study. These were: focusing on gender, valuing women's experiences, rejecting the split between subject and object, emphasising personal empowerment and acting for political change. Secondly, I aim to highlight some of the difficulties and dilemmas such an approach brought and describe some of my attempts to work through these tensions. Thirdly, I seek to open up further debate and dialogue on the question of feminist research in rural sociology.

This paper uses data from a survey of women in the Australian sugar industry to examine why women are absent in decision‐making positions within the agri‐political organization Canegrowers. Canegrowers represents the interests of over 6,000 cane farming families in Australia, but no woman holds any of the 181 positions of elected leadership within the organization. Factor analysis of the 233 returned survey responses revealed that there are five main factors which constrain women's involvement in agri‐politics. These are a lack of support, the conduct, time and location of meetings, the masculinist culture of the organization, women's multiple commitments and a lack of interest. The paper concludes by highlighting the limited amount of work that has considered women's leadership in a rural context and identifying some directions future work could take.