Guest column: The distance tax: What rural women pay for opportunity

As 2026 arrived, I got news that made me simultaneously proud and broken: My theatrical project advanced to the final round of a prestigious national competition, top 7% of applicants. I’m a Creative Capital finalist. Entering Creative Capital this year meant artists were considered for two awards: the classic artist award celebrating its 25th year, and an award meant for recipients in each of 50 states. Iowa’s award went to someone who describes themselves often and enthusiastically as a Brooklyn (New York, not Iowa) artist. I’m not sure why the atlas shrugged, but it’s not the first time the arts have centered urban over rural artists and projects. 

Then I looked at my bank account and remembered I still earn, let’s just call it under $20 per hour as a rural Iowa journalist. I’m in my 11th year as local journalist for the Estherville News, the local weekly paper here in Estherville, and while I write and take photographs beyond my wage, my earnings are part of the reality of the industry. I need a side gig to afford my career and calling. 

National recognition doesn’t pay for gas to Des Moines. It doesn’t cover the hotel room I need because networking events start at 6 p.m. and it’s often not safe to drive home in winter darkness. It doesn’t reimburse child care or the vacation day I burn just to access what urban women consider a Tuesday evening.

This is the distance tax. And it’s not optional.

Every professional opportunity costs triple what it costs my urban peers. Three hours driving each way, $60 in gas, $120 for overnight stay. That’s $220 to attend a one-hour event. My urban colleague spends $5 on parking and 30 minutes driving across town.

We call this equality of opportunity.

The distance tax shows up like clockwork. Health care specialists mean half-day absences from work. Professional conferences require hotel costs and the particular calculus rural women know by heart: Can I afford this? Can I afford to be gone? Can I afford not to go?

For rural women, “leaning in” means leaning so far forward we’re practically horizontal.

I founded a bilingual newsletter with 1,700 subscribers because I thought,  “I’ll build infrastructure here instead of always driving there.” Over four years later, I’m still making the drive for opportunities that could advance my career. Digital connection doesn’t replace the casual conversation that becomes your next collaboration. Networks form over coffee after workshops, in the organic chemistry of proximity.

And proximity costs money rural women don’t have.

Iowa Workforce Development data confirms what we know in our exhausted bones: Rural women earn 15-20% less than urban women in identical positions. But those numbers miss the compound interest of disadvantage. Professional advancement requires access to networks, mentorship and connections that cluster in cities. We’re not just earning less — we’re paying more to access opportunities that might help us earn more.

The distance tax reveals something uglier than individual struggle: Rural women aren’t “choosing” limited advancement. We’re succeeding despite systems designed to make us fail — or at least succeed more slowly, more expensively, more exhaustingly than our urban counterparts.

We persist because we’re stubborn, not because the system works.

I want you to understand what that exhaustion feels like. It’s not just physical tiredness from driving. It’s the psychological weight of doing everything twice as hard for half the recognition. It’s watching urban peers advance through connections made casually while you’re calculating whether you can afford the gas. It’s the particular rage of being talented enough for national recognition but geographically positioned for economic precarity.

It’s knowing your work matters and watching the distance between your talent and your audience, to say nothing of compensation, grow wider every year.

But here’s the fire beneath the exhaustion: Rural women are building alternative systems anyway.

We’re creating shared workspaces in small towns. We’re forming peer networks that meet regionally. We’re proving that talent doesn’t require urban ZIP codes—it just requires infrastructure investment we keep being denied.

So here’s what needs to change: 

Organizations: Stop centralizing everything. Bring programming to regional hubs quarterly or admit you only serve urban women. Regional workshops cost you convenience — that’s the point.

Rural communities: Internet infrastructure isn’t optional. Invest in broadband like you invested in highways 60 years ago.

Policymakers: Rural child care deserts are policy failures. When women leave the workforce because child care doesn’t exist within 50 miles, that’s your responsibility.

Women with resources: Fund rural women’s projects directly. We have skills and vision — we lack financial cushion for professional risks. Be specific: Invest in rural women creating infrastructure for other rural women.

Rural women: Asset-map what we have. Affordable housing. Tight community bonds. Space for deep creative work. Slower pace that allows revolutionary thinking. Build on our advantages while demanding infrastructure investment we deserve.

The distance tax is real, but it’s not destiny. Every rural woman who persists isn’t just advancing her career — she’s proving talent doesn’t require proximity to power. We’re demonstrating daily that the current system isn’t inevitable, it’s just convenient for people who already have access.

I may earn a salary in the $30,000s in Estherville, in a day job into which I pour my heart, soul, energy and time, but I’m creating nationally recognized theatrical work about economic inequality while living it. The distance between my achievement and my compensation is geographic, structural and entirely preventable.

What if we designed systems where brilliance could thrive regardless of address?

Where professional development didn’t require choosing between career advancement and paying rent?

That’s not utopian — it’s basic equity applied to geography.

Rural women have been paying the distance tax long enough. We’re done asking politely for systems that don’t actively punish us for living where we live.

We’re building alternatives. Investing in each other. Creating the infrastructure we’ve been denied.

And we’re doing it with a particular fire that comes from being told we’re not worth the investment while simultaneously being praised for our resilience.

Watch us. We’re not going anywhere. We’re making everywhere work.

Even if we have to do it ourselves.

Amy H. Peterson is a journalist at the Estherville News and founder of The E’ville Good, a bilingual newsletter serving Northwest Iowa’s communities with Hispanic neighbors, and beyond. She was a 2026 Creative Capital finalist for “Clarity,” her dramedy play exploring economic justice through the story of an Iowa family looking at money and finance through conflicting lenses. She holds a BFA in creative writing and MA in journalism, is a fellow of Columbia Journalism School/Mailman School of Public Health’s Age Boom Academy, and has received recognition from the Joyce Foundation and Iowa Newspaper Association for her community journalism. She lives in Estherville with her family and pets.