Chapter 3: The Impact of an Oil Boom on Gendered Power Dynamics, Inequalities, and Interpersonal Violence

Given the diverse ways gender operates to shape social structures, group dynamics, and interpersonal relationships, gender scholars have often sought to explore the consequences of circumstances that disrupt or shock the gender order as a way to illuminate gender power dynamics, inequalities, and opportunities for change (Connell, 1987; Fenstermaker et al., 1991; Ridgeway & Correll, 2004; Risman, 2009). Boomtowns are communities that experience rapid economic growth and population change, often as a result of natural resource extraction activities. The impacts of these changes evolve over time as the stages of resource extraction progress (Brown et al., 2005) and tend to have profound effects on rural communities, impacting the local economy and infrastructure (Carrington & Pereira, 2011), public health and substance use (Goldenberg et al., 2010; Parkins & Angell, 2011), and crime and community satisfaction (Carrington et al., 2011; Luthra et al., 2007; Ruddell & Ortiz, 2015). The substantial body of literature on boomtowns has shown that rapid population growth can lead to a sense of anomie and weakened social ties (Jones, 2016), and that lags in human infrastructure development impact the ability of communities to respond to increasing population needs and crime at the outset of resource-based booms (Archbold et al., 2014; Ruddell, 2011). While boomtown effects are often described as disruptions to the existing social order (Forsyth et al., 2007), some contemporary scholars challenge this conceptualization (DeKeseredy & Donnermeyer, 2023; Jones & Mayzer, 2021). No matter how these changes are defined, boomtowns provide scholars an ideal opportunity to examine the effects of large-scale economic and demographic changes on important social forces that shape gendered power dynamics, including women’s risk of interpersonal violence. In this chapter, I examine these relationships using a case study of the Bakken oil boom.