“Have You Been to Walmart?” Gender and Perceptions of Safety in North Dakota Boomtowns

ABSTRACT

Between 2010 and 2015, North Dakota’s economy was out of sync with the rest of the U.S. As a result of the Bakken oil boom, unemployment registered approximately 1% in northwestern North Dakota while the rest of the country suffered the lingering effects of the Great Recession. As one of the only sharply growing economies during that time, job seekers descended from every state in search of high-paying oilfield jobs. The majority of those job seekers were men, and this study examines how the hypermasculinized environment altered perceptions of safety and security for men and women living in the Bakken.

KEYWORDS:

• Gender
• masculinity
• boomtown
• oil
• natural resource boom

Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful to the editors and anonymous reviewers of The Sociological Quarterly, as well as Angela High-Pippert and Ellen Sachs who all provided valuable feedback throughout the process. We would also like to thank the research respondents who gave of their time, as well as those who helped us find our initial interviewees.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported, in part, by a grants from Augsburg University and the Midwest Sociological Society.

Notes on contributors

Timothy Pippert

Timothy Pippert is Professor of Sociology and Director of the Center for Teaching and Learning at Augsburg University. Taking advantage of the close proximity of the Bakken to Minneapolis, he began conducting research on the social implications of the oil boom in 2012. In addition to his work in North Dakota, he has published on the social ties of homeless men as well as photographic portrayals of student body diversity in college recruitment materials.

Rachel Zimmer Schneider

Rachel Zimmer Schneider is Lecturer of Sociology at The Ohio State University – Newark. Because she is a native of North Dakota and still has family in the area, she was inspired to study the gendered impact of the oil boom on the lives of North Dakotans. Besides her work on the Bakken, her primary publications have been on battered women who have killed their abusers and the Ohio Battered Women’s Clemency Movement.