While many rural communities are home to predomenantly male leaders, there are pleanty of professional women making an impact in rural healthcare systems, industries, and organizations. Today we speak to a few of these women who are chaning the face of rural leadership and promoting equity within their communites.    - [Julia] This Rural Mission is brought to you by Michigan State University College of Human Medicine Leadership in Rural Medicine Programs. The podcast is funded in part by a generous grant provided by the Herbert H. And Grace A. Dow Foundation. To learn more about the Leadership in Rural Medicine Programs, please visit www.msururalhealth.chm.msu.edu. I'm your host, Julia Terhune, and stay tuned for more from this Rural Mission.  (lively banjo music) -[Julia] What do you want to be when you grow up? - [Dina] I don't know yet (giggling in background) but I'm thinking about maybe being a doctor. - [Julia] A doctor? What kind of doctor? - [Dina] Probably a doctor that gives checkups. - [Julia] What do you want to be when you grow up? - [Selah] Superhero. - [Julia] I think that you're gonna be a really great superhero, but I also think that you're gonna be a really good doctor, Dina. - [Salah] I'm not gonna be a superhero; I'm gonna be another doctor. - [Julia] You're gonna be a doctor, too? - [Selah] A family doctor.  (quiet giggling) - [Julia] That's perfect. You guys can both be doctors and work in the same office. - [Selah] I can be the person who gives shots. Sometimes we have to give the baby shots and they cry a lot. - [Julia] Yeah, but then you give them stickers and they feel better. I'm excited for you guys to become doctors. - [Selah] And when I become a doctor, instead of giving them a sticker, I'll give them a barbie.  (lively banjo music) - [Julia] Those little voices that you just heard are two of my favorite little people, Dina and Sala. You know, it just warms my heart because Dina and Selah live in a world that I lived in where girls could do anything. Dina wants to be a doctor; Sala wants to be a superhero. There's no reason why she can't be a superhero and why she would think that being a girl would hinder that at all, and I lived in that world, too. I lived in a world where I thought and believed that I could do anything, and for the most part, there have been very few barriers for me reaching my goals and my dreams. That's not to say that I haven't felt adversity or I haven't dealt with other roadblocks, but when it comes to my gender, I haven't felt that as much, but I know my mom did. I know my mom did, and I know that the women before us have fought so tirelessly to make a difference and to stand up for women's rights because women's rights are human rights, and I think that that has been a big thing that we need to realize and I think that there's been a lot of effort made in that area. But it's not to say that there's not more that can't be done.  (slow twangy music) There's a stereotype in rural communities that rural communities are very patriarchal, and to some degree, that actually is the case. And I will qualify that stereotype by stating that when you look at the job structure or the job market in rural communities, what you tend to see is that there is a limit in the number of industries that you find in those different counties. So while this isn't the case for every single rural county in the United States, at least what we see among the demographics in the rural counties in Michigan, the leadership of those more white collar-jobs and the leadership in more of those blue collar-jobs are men. I'm going to be interviewing a number of women who have made and are making some really amazing differences and a pretty big splash in their rural community, and no matter how you slice it or what way you look at it, the women that we're going to talk to today are leaders in their county. One area that we've seen tremendous growth in gender equality is in medical education and the medical workf