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Feminist geography

 
Geography Dictionary: feminist geography
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A geography which questions the patriarchal and hierarchical assumptions on which geography is based, and emphasizes the oppression of women and the gender inequality between men and women, especially as expressed in gendered space—from the masculine spaces of mines to City finance houses, to the feminized spaces of primary schools and garment factories.

Urban design overwhelmingly reflects the male viewpoint; for example, a cycle track in Oxford has been hidden from the main road by a hedge-topped bank. From a male point of view this makes the track quieter and less polluted. The track is desperately unsafe for women, and a number have been attacked along it.

Some feminist geographers argue that cities should be restructured, in order to reduce gender inequalities, since it is argued that women's access to a range of goods and services is more restricted than men's. Others study the ways in which environmental perception and the representation of space vary with gender, and claim that the very language of geography is gendered and sexist. It is also argued that in social research the gender of the researcher may influence the result, and there are those who would characterize feminist geographical scholarship as concerned with ‘the problematic, shifting and ambiguous relationships between selves and others, men and women, centres and margins, and colonizers and colonized’ (Longhurst, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 24). Further social themes concern the geography of women's issues like abortion laws, women as wage-earners, and women's access to education, income, health care, and day care for children and aged dependants.

An important task has been the writing of geographies of women, which emphasize the way in which women's experiences, perceptions, and even embodiment of mobility differ from those of men; the relation of women to the world is embodied in the purposive, and socially controlled, movements of their bodies. Other geographies of women reveal the part played by nineteenth-century women travellers in the expansion of geographical knowledge, the vital reproductive role of women within the home (the ‘training ground for rational men’) in the rise of industrial capitalism, and the work of the daughters, sisters, and wives of colonialists in the construction of colonial spaces and colonial identities.

Socialist feminist geographers are concerned with the way in which the structuring of space perpetuates traditional gender roles and relationships, and note the way in which spatial variations in gender relationships can affect industrial location; the availability of cheap female labour is a major attraction to employers, and the quantity of this type of labour varies regionally, nationally, and globally. There are those who draw analogies between women and colonized people, but others suggest that the commonalities between women and Third World people are far outweighed by the differences between them.

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Feminist geography is an approach in human geography which applies the theories, methods and critiques of feminism to the study of the human environment, society and geographical space.[1]

Contents

Areas of study

Rather than a specific sub-discipline of Geography, feminist geography is often considered part of a broader postmodern approach, often drawing from the theories of Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, and Judith Butler among others. More recent influences include critiques of feminism from postcolonial theorists. Feminist geographers often focus on the lived experiences of individuals and groups in their own localities, upon the geographies that they live in within their own communities, rather than theoretical development without empirical work.[1]

Many feminist geographers study the same subjects as other geographers, but often with a focus on gender divisions.[2] This concern has developed into a concern with wider issues of gender, family, sexuality etc. Examples of areas of focus which stem from this include:

In addition to societal studies, Feminist Geography also critiques Human Geography and other academic disciplines, arguing that academic structures have been traditionally characterized by a patriarchal perspective, and that contemporary studies which do not confront the nature of previous work reinforce the masculine bias of academic study.[3] The British Geographer Gillian Rose's Feminism and Geography[1] is one such sustained criticism, focused on Human Geography in Britain as being historically masculinist in its approach. This includes the writing of landscape as feminine (and thus as subordinate to male geographers), assuming a separation between mind and body. The following is referenced from Johnston & Sidaway (2004), and further describes such a separation and its influence on geography:

"'Cartesian dualism underlines our thinking in a myriad of ways, not least in the divergence of the social sciences from the natural sciences, and in a geography which is based on the separation of people from their environments. Thus while geography is unusual in its spanning of the natural and social sciences and in focusing on the interralations between people and their environments, it is still assumed that the two are distinct and one acts on the other. Geography, like all of the social sciences, has been built upon a particular conception of mind and body which sees them as separate, apart and acting on each other (Johnston, 1989, cited in Longhurst, 1997, p. 492)' Thus, too, feminist work has sought to transform approaches to the study of landscape by relating it to the way that it is represented ('appreciated' so to speak), in ways that are analogous to the heterosexual male gaze directed towards the female body (Nash 1996). Both of these concerns (and others)- about the body as a contested site and for the Cartesian distinction between mind and body - have been challenged in postmodern and poststructuralist feminist geographies."[4]

List of related geographers

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c Rose, Gillian (1993) Feminism and Geography: The Limits of Geographical Knowledge Univ. of Minnesota Press
  2. ^ McDowell, Linda (1993) Space, place and gender relations in Progress in Human Geography 17(2)
  3. ^ Moss, Pamela, 2007 Feminisms in Geography: Rethinking Space, Place, and Knowledges Rowman & Littlefield Publishers ISBN 9780742538290
  4. ^ Johnston, R.J. & J.D. Sidaway. (2004). Geography and Geographers. London: Arnold, p. 312.

Further reading

  • McDowell, Linda (1992) Doing gender: feminisms, feminists and research methods in human geography. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 17, 399-416.
  • McDowell, Linda; and Sharp, Joanne P. (eds). (1999). A Feminist Glossary of Human Geography. London: Arnold.
  • McDowell, Linda. (1999) Gender, Identity and Place: understanding feminist geographies. Cambridge : Polity Press, 1999
  • Pratt, Geraldine (2004) "Working Feminism." Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
  • Gillian Rose (1993) Feminism and Geography: The Limits of Geographical Knowledge Univ. of Minnesota Press
  • Seager, Joni and Nelson, Lise. (eds) (2004) Companion to Feminist Geography (Blackwell Companions to Geography). Blackwell Publishers, ISBN 1-4051-0186-5
  • Valentine, Gill. (2004) Public Space and the Culture of Childhood. London:Ashgate
  • Johnston, R.J. & J.D. Sidaway. (2004). Geography and Geographers. London: Arnold. Chapter 8: Feminist geographies.

Scientific Journals

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Sub-fields of and approaches to Human geography
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Approaches

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