It takes a village to get divorced: gender, class, location-specific capital, and solidarity in conservative rural communities of Eastern Poland

This article explores the ways in which working class women in Eastern Poland navigate divorce in post-agricultural Catholic rural communities. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted between 2018 and 2022 and 30 autobiographical narratives, I introduce the concept of ‘gendered location-specific capital of the rural working class’. This framework provides a new lens for examining how place and locality intersect with rural working-class dispositions, community capital, and gendered expectations of rural femininity and masculinity, leading to patterns of support as well as collective resistance during the stigmatised divorce and emancipation process. I illustrate these patterns through two case studies of empowerment because of divorce – those of Mirka and Dorota.The findings offer new insights into the role of gendered location-specific capital in shaping the lives of divorced rural women stayers. They contribute to intersectional gender and rural geography by highlighting the complexities and ambivalences of resistance, solidarity, and survival strategies in de-agrarianising, remote, conservative communities. The article reveals how rural working-class women negotiate emancipation within conservative communities, focusing on the role of local informal networks and familial/community alliances.