Edited by Gary Gaile
and CortWillmot
Ann M. Oberhauser,
Donna Rubinoff, Karen De Bres,
Susan Mains, and Cindy Pope
CONTENTS
Methodological
Breakthroughs and Boundaries
The
Geography of Feminist Economics
Geographic
Perspectives on Gender and Development
Background
to Gender and Development
Contemporary
Gender and Development
The
Future of Gender and Development
Nationalism,
Identity, and Transnationalism
Sexuality,
Identity, and Spaces of the Body
The
Body and Medical Geography
Challenges
for the Future: (Re)Presenting Gender and Space
Feminist
Pedagogy and Teaching in Geography
Institutional
barriers to and opportunities for feminist pedagogy
Practicing
Feminism Inside and Outside the Classroom
Figure
1. Status of Women in the AAG, 1974-97
Table
1.Traditions within feminist geographic
research
The
thematic topics presented in this chapter address feminist analyses of
methodology, gender and work,
According
to the editors of this book, our charge was to write an assessment of feminist
geography that is “comprehensive, current, forward-looking, and influential.”The
task of writing this chapter has occurred in a participatory and collaborative
manner that reflects feminist projects.Before
proceeding to the content of the chapter, the authors are introduced along
with a few words about the process of writing this chapter.We
represent a diverse group of scholars in terms of our positions in the
academy, areas of specialization, and institutional affiliations.Our
interest in feminist geography is shaped by our involvement and background
in a variety of specializations that include cultural, political, development,
economic, and medical geography.The
diversity of our approaches will be evident in a manner that, it is hoped,
does not detract from, but enriches our analysis.
To
capture the full flavor of the subfield and incorporate the voices of other
feminist geographers, we solicited input through a survey distributed on
the GPOW listserv and a presentation at the 1999 annual meeting of the
Association of American Geographers (AAG).The
survey was administered in October of 1998 and raised questions about the
following topics: how people became involved in gender geography; major
theories, concepts, and/or methods that have impacted the subfield; noteworthy
articles and books; the role of feminist pedagogy and other professional
activities in geography; and future directions of the subfield.The
survey generated responses that guided our discussions about the subfield
and its contribution to geography.The
diversity of respondents in regards to ideological background, nationality,
and position in higher education was particularly useful in capturing a
wide range of feminist perspectives.
In
addition, the survey helped us articulate major themes and future directions
in feminist geography, as well as providing personal stories about experiences
as faculty and students in the discipline.Two
themes surfaced from the surveys and are referred to in several sections
of this chapter.First, nearly all
the respondents mentioned the personal dimensions of their involvement
in feminist geography.This came
out in explanations about how they came into the subfield due to their
commitment to feminism, the support gained from professional networks in
the subfield (especially important where female mentors are absent in departments
and institutions), and the role of feminism in their own lives.A
faculty member in a prominent geography department, Vera Chouinard,
remarked that she “became interested as a graduate student but personal
experiences of barriers to women in academic geography and beyond really
fueled that interest.”Another faculty
member, AlthaCravey,
stated that her employment as a construction worker for ten years was instrumental
in shaping her academic research on the gendering of work.The
links between personal experiences and academic endeavors among feminists
are well illustrated by these quotes and relate to the topics outlined
in the discussions below.
A
second theme in many of the surveys was the relevance of feminist research
to research topics within geography.For
example, several people entered this area because they discovered the importance
of feminism and gender to migration, identity politics, economic restructuring,
and post-structuralism.One respondent
commented about her interest as an undergraduate in population geography
and the importance of gender to this area of study.“It
occurred to me that population was a ‘woman’s issue’ – you had to reflect
women’s experiences when discussing population rather than simply crunching
numbers to develop demographic models.”Indeed,
decades of research in feminist geography demonstrates that women, gender,
and feminism are critical aspects of most areas of geographical inquiry.
This
chapter is organized into eight sections whose analyses address the development
of feminist thought in each of these areas.The
discussion emphasizes the dynamic and interrelated nature of these topics.In
the second section, feminist methodology is examined as an area that has
made major contributions to the discipline as a whole.Feminist
research includes a multitude of methods that challenge conventional approaches
and are based on epistemological claims that value everyday experiences
and knowledge that lies outside the dominant realm.Gender
and work is examined in the third section.This
was an important topic among early feminists in the discipline and continues
to advance geographic analyses of labor markets, workforce diversity, and
the culture of work and economic organizations.The
fourth section provides an overview of how feminist geography intersects
with gender and development and analyses of third-world globalization.This
broad and expanding area in the subfield has made important contributions
to environmental studies and political ecology.
The
cultural dimensions of contemporary feminist geography are explored in
the fifth section.Feminism has widened
the scope of cultural geography, confronting masculinist perspectives on
landscape and offering a feminist understanding of culture that recognizes
cultural identity and social constructions of place.The
sixth section examines perhaps one of the most interdisciplinary and dynamic
approaches in feminist geography, gendered identity and the politics of
difference and diversity.This analysis
outlines how power and knowledge are reproduced through identity, gender,
representation, and space, yet stresses the need to interrogate and break
down these terms.The seventh section
addresses pedagogy as part of the praxis of feminist geography.Many
of us are engaged in teaching as a form of praxis within institutions of
higher education, but also in our communities and social networks.The
discussion highlights the crucial role of feminism in our pedagogical approaches.
The
final section addresses the overall position of feminist geography in the
discipline and speculates on the future directions of this area of study.Our
analysis reinforces the need to ground our work and not lose sight of the
material basis of difference and inequality in our society.The
multiple and dynamic discourses in the field of feminist geography are
impacting the discipline and will continue to advance our thinking about
social relations and spatial processes into the twenty-first century.
Four
traditions within feminist geographic research are outlined here in to
their dominant theoretical approaches, methodological concerns, and selected
research topics (Table 1).As
indicated in the text, these four traditions are by no means distinct phases,
but represent a general shift of ideas in feminist geographical research.This
section focuses on the methodological issues that have shaped feminist
research in the 1990s, specifically, the subject/object relationship, the
multiple modes or techniques employed in feminist research, and the politics
of research.
(Table
1. Traditions Within Feminist Geographic Researchhere)
Early
feminist geography was based on feminist empiricism and a critique of positivist
research methods that focus on objectivity and the privileging of certain
forms of knowledge.This work provided
important critiques of sexist biases or androcentrism in geographic research
(Table 1).Monk
and Hanson (1982), for example, claimed that conventional geographic research
failed to account for women’s experiences in studies of migration, travel
patterns, employment trends, and livelihood strategies.These
claims paralleled widespread challenges to positivist methodologies that
separated the object from the subject of research to ensure neutral and
value-free research.
In
contrast, the underlying assumptions in feminist approaches highlight subjectivity
and biases inherent in the research process (McDowell 1992a; Staeheli
and Lawson 1995).
The
notion of subjectivity in feminist research raises critical questions about
the basic assumptions of how knowledge and power influence the research
process.Feminist geography does not
draw a clear line between “researcher” and “researched,” recognizing that
researchers themselves are part of the social structure of the project
(Women and Geography Study Group 1997).This
is illustrated in Gilbert’s (1994, 1998) work on survival strategies of
low-income women and the role of networks in finding various social and
economic support systems.During her
fieldwork for this project, she confronted the sometimes “messy” relationship
between herself as an academic researcher and the women she interviewed.
The
social and spatial situatedness of researchers
and the communities they are studying also emphasizes the importance of relationality
and reflexivity in fieldwork (Table 1).Nagar’s
(1997) ethnographic research on Tanzanian Asians includes fieldwork in
a community that she describes as a kaleidoscope of social sites of segregated,
gendered, classed, raced, and communalized spaces.She
claims that people’s perceptions of her “continually shaped the structure
and interpretation of the narratives that were produced in the course of
my work” (Nagar 1997: 208).In
contrast to masculinist research that defines who participates and what
questions are posed, feminist methodology emphasizes the subjective and
reflexive nature of research.For
numerous scholars, this involves the participants by letting them guide
the questioning and help define the terms of fieldwork (Rocheleau 1995;
Townsend et al. 1995).
Additionally,
the manner in which feminist research is conducted involves multiple methods
and techniques that are appropriate to the social context and purpose of
the research.Feminist geographers
draw from a wide variety of qualitative and quantitative methods that have
enriched our understanding of the complex conceptual and empirical aspects
of research.A major contribution
to this discussion was the collection of articles in The Professional
Geographer (1994,1995) that critically addressed the complexities and
politics of ‘fieldwork’ and examined the role of quantitative methodology
in feminist geographic research.While
the emphasis in much of feminist geography is on qualitative methods, McLafferty
(1995: 438) states that “quantitative methods are well suited to describe
and probe the main aspects of women’s lives, to analyze spatial association,
and to document spatial and temporal inequalities.”In
addition to quantitative analyses, excellent examples of qualitative methods
such as ethnography (Dyck 1993; Nagar
1998), life histories (Townsend et al. 1995), intensive interviews
(Gilbert 1998; Oberhauser 1997), and visual arts (Monk and Norwood 1987)
demonstrate how a variety of approaches allows us to understand the materiality
and meaning of women’s experiences.The
goal is to highlight the complementary nature of multiple research methods
to search for and understand relevant patterns and trends.
Permeating
the epistemology, subjectivity, and multiple methods of feminist research
discussed above is the political agenda of feminist research. (see Table
1.)An implicit goal of this approach
is to uncover and challenge power relations within the research process
and underlying the topic of study.For
example, Oberhauser (1997) examines the multiple aspects of power relations
in the domestic sphere as both a site of income generation and a “field”
of research.The social location of
participants has been carefully addressed by many who seek to reveal and
work around the “social terrain” of the field, if not to overcome the potentially
exploitative nature of researching “the other” (Nast
1994).Gibson-Graham (1994) addresses
this issue in her research on women in mining communities in central
In
sum, the 1990s have been a decade of phenomenal advances and lively debates
in feminist geographic methodology.It
remains a cornerstone of much of this subfield as more attention is paid
to diversity and critical representation of the subjects of research.There
remains considerable work to be done, however.Hanson
(1997) articulates the need to open up new horizons in feminist geography
by devising approaches that will reveal the unexpected and not affirm what
one already believes.As discussed
above, these approaches may involve experimenting with new methods, exploring
a combination of methods, or involving other collaborators to understand
better what we know and, more importantly, how we came to know it.
First,
feminist theory challenges masculinist approaches that neglect the role
of gender in economic processes.Examples
of gender biases in conventional economic geography reflect the aggregation
of workforce data with the implicit assumption that male and female work
experiences are similar.Increasing
attention to empirical differences in men’s and women’s economic activities
has affected theoretical and methodological approaches that no longer ignore
the implications of gender in economic behavior (Hanson and Pratt 1995).
Second,
feminist geography considers multiple social relations that impact and
are impacted by the economy.Contemporary
feminist theory, and post-structuralism in particular, have opened up economic
analyses to gender as well as race, ethnicity, age, sexuality, and other
forms of power and identity in society (Gilbert 1998; Peake
1993).These social constructions
are critical in examining economic processes such as the location of factories,
industrial restructuring, household income-generating strategies, and other
economic processes.
Third,
feminist geography has influenced methodological issues concerning what
questions are asked and how research is conducted in economic geography.Drawing
from the discussion and Table 1 in the previous
section, feminist research questions male-biased assumptions about who
is the primary contributor to household and indeed national economies.
The prevalence of activities outside the formal waged labor force demand
that we shift our approach to research to obtain a better understanding
of women and gender issues in the workforce and the household (Folbre
1994; Oberhauser 1995).Qualitative
research methods such as intensive interviews, participant observation,
and personal narratives are commonly used in feminist research and can
be usefully applied in economic analyses.The
remainder of this discussion draws from these themes to outline four trends
in the development of feminist economic geography.These
trends do not necessarily represent separate and consecutive phases, but
reflect the general development of thinking in feminist geography.
During
the 1970s and early 1980s, feminist empiricism examined the spatial distribution
of women’s work on national and global scales as a means of “counting”
women and acknowledging their economic contribution to society (Table
1).Early empirical analyses described
the discipline as androcentric due to the
marginal role and status of females in the discipline (Lee and Schultz
1982) and the neglect of women’s experiences in geographic inquiry (Mazey
and Lee 1983; Monk and Hanson 1982).Gender
and work was an important theme in this early literature because it highlighted
women’s inequality in the home, the workplace, and society as a whole (Bowlby
et al. 1989; Monk and Hanson 1982).
The
second trend had its roots in political economy or Marxist geography.Some
of the earliest pieces on women and work appeared during the late 1970s
and early 1980s and were couched solidly within a historical materialist
framework with a strong focus on gender and employment in urban areas (Hayford
1974; Mackenzie and Rose 1983). The influence of socialist feminism was
important during this period as patriarchy and capitalism were used to
explain how gender roles and divisions of labor contribute to social and
economic inequality (Mackenzie 1989; Bowlby
et al. 1989).
Many
of the respondents to the survey noted the importance of socialist feminism
and Marxism to the development of ideas and the strengthening of community
within feminist geography.Vera Chouinard,
for example, remarked that, ‘socialist feminist theory has been important
in encouraging analyses of gender as one of many relations of inequality
and oppression in our societies.Personally,
training in Marxist geography was important in encouraging consideration
of how relations such as gender are actively contested and sometimes changed
in the course of struggles against oppression.’Other
feminists trained in geography during the 1970s and early 1980s found a
sense of camaraderie among socialist geographers that is evident in their
work today.Damaris
Rose notes the importance of this group during her graduate education and
especially the presence of certain students who have gone on to significantly
influence this subfield.
I
started graduate school where I met Suzanne Mackenzie as another new graduate
student who had come from BC and was doing “women’s studies.”I
couldn’t for the life of me figure out what this had to do with geography!
Within a short while she and I and several others were involved in a reading
group on Marxist theory and the city, where among other things we were
trying to grapple with extending concepts such as the reproduction of labour
power. 1
These
accounts demonstrate that during the 1970s and 1980s, much of feminist
geography was emerging from socialist geography and formed part of a critical
school of thought in the discipline.
The
third trend in feminist economic geography has extended social categories
to include other forms of power and identity such as race, ethnicity, and
sexuality.This trend addressed the
complexity of gender and work in diverse geographical and socioeconomic
contexts and led to a reconceptualization
of spatial processes that occur outside the formal boundaries of public
workplaces.In particular, these
approaches were helpful in opening up social categories that allowed us
to deconstruct dominant notions of women and work to include globalization,
informal activities, and immigrant labor.Globalization
and the increasing incorporation of women in the economies of developing
regions accentuate the fluid boundaries of work and home and formal and
informal economic activities (Faulkner and Lawson 1991; Hays-Mitchell 1993;
Lawson 1995; Oberhauser 1995).This
area of feminist research includes a theoretically diverse and empirically
rich literature that offers critical perspectives on the contested role
of gender as it is mediated by race, ethnicity, sexuality, class, and geographical
contexts (Marchand and Parpart 1995; Momsen and Kinnaird 1993).
The
link between women’s economic strategies in an era of global restructuring
and the social construction of gender identity raises questions regarding
the categories of analysis and universalizing assumptions about women’s
labor and gender relations.In a compelling
analysis of Mexican women in the maquiladora
industry, Wright (1997) examines the importance of gender identity in the
work performed by these women.Representation
of the Mexican “Woman” as a docile, submissive, and tradition-bound worker
stems from the dominant Western discourse of third-world women.This
discourse is challenged by feminists throughout the developing world who
document how women engage in strategies of resistance and struggle to empower
themselves economically (Beneria and Feldman
1992; Cravey 1997; Tinker 1990).A
more detailed analysis of gender and development is presented in the fifth
section of this chapter.Overall,
this trend has helped redefine categories and explore alternative methodologies
to research the social and spatial construction of gender and work in different
cultural and geographical contexts.
The
fourth trend examines the gendering of work through a focus on identity,
culture, and representation.Feminist
discussions about economic processes shifted in the early 1990s from materialist
notions of production and consumption in the capitalist economy to social
and cultural dimensions of workplace dynamics and the role of gender in
the organization of firms (Hanson and Pratt 1995; McDowell 1997; McDowell
and Court 1994).Increased attention
to these aspects of economic activities coincided with the expansion of
the service-based economy and growing attention to cultural practices of
work (Halford and Savage 1997).
What
has been labeled the “cultural turn” in human geography has influenced
feminist economic geography considerably through increased attention to
the ways in which masculinity and femininity are constructed in the workplace.Case
studies and intensive fieldwork are used to analyze how the embodied nature
of work influences the social construction of gender divisions of labor,
employment experiences, and contemporary trends in industrialized and developing
economies.For example, Massey’s (1995,
1997) research on social dimensions of the high-technology workplace describes
the construction of masculine space that embodies the elite concept of
reason.She argues that Western economies
and their places of“science” are
socially constructed in ways that separate mental reason on the one hand
and the materialities of the world on the
other (Massey 1997).This recent shift
in analyses of gender and work has contributed to the cultural turn in
human geography that focuses on the embedded and embodied nature of economic
processes in cultural contexts and institutions.Gender
is an integral aspect of this cultural order of the economy and part of
the process of restructuring in ways that are unique to feminist geography.
In
conclusion, beginning with its roots in empiricist research on women and
work, feminist perspectives on economic geography offer recommendations
for emancipatory, inclusive analyses of
the social and spatial dimensions of economic processes.These
analyses are grounded in the claim that women, people of color, and other
disempowered members of society remain marginalized in the workforce due
to socially constructed norms and dominant power relations.Multiple
theoretical and methodological approaches are used to identify and explore
the positions and institutional context of these power relations.Additionally,
comparative research and exploration of parallel experiences of workers
(especially women) in diverse cultural and political economic contexts
is necessary.Globalization is breaking
down boundaries and requiring more sophisticated knowledge of economic
processes at multiple scales.Finally,
contemporary feminist analyses of economic processes reveal how culture
is embedded in and constitutive of gender and work.Perhaps
these analyses will contribute to the emancipation of workers and the formation
of institutions that are sensitive to multiple social differences among
workers and the diverse forms of production that are part of economic strategies.
During
the early 1980s, as the neoliberal paradigm
and the IMF reasserted their influence as a result of the world debt crisis,
development institutions shifted their attention to women's productive
and reproductive roles for their potential contribution to and subsidization
of economic growth. Examples of this type of development included aid for
women's agricultural schemes and support for small-scale enterprise, micro-credit,
and village banking schemes (Kabeer 1994; Moser
1993).Consequently, a strong and
vocal group of both northern and southern academic and activist critics
had emerged to protest the implications of neoliberal
policy controlled by Western development and financial institutions. Some
of these critics argued that WID efforts resulted in increasing wealth
and power of the elites or that gender bias in some development programs
affected women and children negatively (Apshar
and Dennis 1992; Beneria and Feldman 1992;
Gladwin 1992; Shiva 1989; Sparr 1994). Other
critics argued that gender bias would actually hinder sustainable development
(Elson 1995b; Jacobson 1992).
Part
of the critique of mainstream development and WID concerned the need to decenter
Eurocentric perspectives and conceptualize alternative analytical tools
for development that would integrate marginalized peoples.These
critics argued for the incorporation of perspectives from third-world women
who were being directly affected by hegemonic development policies, and
initiated the concept of empowerment in which voice, power, and development
were integrally linked.Post-colonial
or alternative development perspectives were initiated by a group of feminists
in the South, when DAWN (Development Alternatives with Women for a New
Era) published its manual Development, Crises, and Alternative Visions
(Sen and Grown 1987).
Some
of this literature conceptualized social relations of gender in which household
or personal power relations were seen as institutional locations of analysis
that lowered barriers to development.This
concept would serve as the basis for a radical reorientation from women
toward gender relations as an analytical tool and reflect the emergence
of institutions as an analytical framework within development theory.This
shift signaled a theoretical reorientation away from mainstream and WID
development theory to a more progressive notion of gender and development
that incorporated not only gender, but also alternative perspectives, methodologies,
and epistemologies. (See Kabeer (1994)
and Momsen (1991) for more detailed overviews.)
The
first approach, environmental sustainability, spawned a sizable
body of work on women and the environment (see Dankelman
and Davidson 1988; Shiva 1989). This work has been generally categorized
under the term Gender, Environment, and Development (GED) and includes
general feminist overviews and critiques of environment and development
(Braidotti et al. 1994; Harcourt 1994;
Scott 1995; van den Hombergh 1993).Seagar'sEarth
Follies (1993) is an important geographic contribution to this approach.
One aspect of this literature is ecofeminism that links the nature and causes of patriarchy and environmental destruction (Mies and Shiva 1995; Merchant 1980; Plumwood 1993; Warren, 1994).According to ecofeminists, these two forms of oppression have similar origins.Women are also seen as integral to the solution of environmental deterioration.In contrast, materialist environmental feminism critiques essentialist relations between women and nature and analyzes the political economy, institutional, and material aspects of gender in relation to the environment (Agarwal 1992, 1994; Jackson 1993, 1995; Nanda 1997).
Geographers
have also been instrumental in the development of feminist political ecology
that addresses gendered environmental relations. This perspective extends
the analyses of cultural and political ecology by incorporating both the
large-scale political economic forces of power and distribution and the
household scale to better understand environmental degradation (Rocheleau
et al. 1996; Carney 1992, 1993; Leach 1994, 1995; Sachs 1996; Schroeder
1993, 1997).
Economic
restructuring and globalization have been a second key influence on GAD
during the last decade.This has not
only led to a shift in the meaning of development in which it is no longer
possible to simply understand it as a linear process from third world to
first world; but as a reconfiguration into a network of global systems,
spatial relationships, cultures, and identities.Specific
responses to globalization have been produced on multiple academic fronts.Feminist
economists, for example, critique development policy and its negative impact
on local lives while challenging the gender bias of economic development
and globalization.The feminist alternative
highlights these invisibilities and attempts to correct mistakes of mainstream
economics (see Agarwal 1994; Bakker 1994;
Blumberg 1991; Elson 1995a, b; Folbre
1993, 1994; Sparr 1994).Geographers
such as Gibson-Graham (1996), Hart (1991, 1992), Cravey
(1998), and Radcliffe and Westwood (1993,
1996) use a political economic framework to address the gendered nature
of globalization and development.
Furthermore,
feminist political scientists have elaborated a critique of the linkages
between geopolitical/international relations and restructuring/development.This
perspective examines the influence of hegemonic political forces on the
integration of the global economy and development.According
to Enloe (1990) and Peterson and Runyon
(1993), this process is highly gendered.Scholars
have also begun to highlight women's social movements and post-colonial
resistance that are responding to global processes (Afshar
1996; Waylen 1996).
Third,
feminist post-structural and post-colonial epistemologies have extended
these feminist political and economic analyses of globalization
and development by challenging the Western, colonial, and modernist presumptions
underlying the origins, nature, and production of knowledge. Building on
the earlier work of DAWN, new theoretical perspectives from third-world
feminists and women of color in the West (Antrobus
1996; Mohantyet al. 1991) as well
as post-structural perspectives (Marchand and Parpart
1995) have questioned mainstream and Western feminist epistemologies.
The
feminist critique of science emerged during the mid-1980s as a strong epistemological
alternative to modernist thinking (Haraway 1989,
1991; Harding 1992,1998; Hartsock 1983;
Keller 1985), and has served as a foundation for the valorization of traditional
and situated knowledge and methodological alternatives. Feminist geographers
have been active in this arena, beginning with several edited collections
that are part of the groundbreaking series International Studies of
Women and Place, edited by Momsen and Monk. (See Momsen and Kinnaird
1993; Radcliffe and Westwood 1993; Townsend
1995; and Fenster 1999).
A
second way in which traditional cultural geographers and adherents to “new”
cultural geography differ is based upon different ways of viewing the landscape.Material
landscape studies are one of the principle foci in cultural geography (Craig
1998; Duncan and Ley 1993).These
studies are seen by others as implying that there is a neutral way of viewing
a landscape.Many feminist geographers
who study landscapes would disagree with this implication, saying that
what is presented as “neutral” is often one form of a white, middle-class,
male gaze (Monk 1992; Rose 1994).As
Rose (1993: 87) points out, “more recent work on landscape has begun to
questions the visuality of traditional
cultural geography, however, as part of a wider critique of the latter's
neglect of the power relations within which landscapes are embedded.”
Traditional
cultural geography also differs from other cultural geographies in its
use of dualisms or dichotomies to describe cultural spaces or behavior.Traditional
cultural geographers sometimes view the natural landscape as “maternal”
and consider nature and culture as a dualism (Rose 1993).But
by using gender as a social and/or spatial construct, feminist geographers
have embarked on several different but related courses.Some,
for example, will look at femininity or masculinity as cultural identities
that are place-specific and entail different spatial behaviors.
In
the 1990s, questions of politics and representation, as well as questions
of dualism were addressed by feminist geographers writing about culture.Some
researchers tried tospatialize the dualism already
mentioned between what was seen as a masculine disembodied reason and feminine
embodiment and emotion (Bondi 1992).
Geographers
writing about gender and culture tend to do so in a way that emphasizes
the interwoven nature of gender, class, space, and place and draws from
historical and contemporary case studies.Bondi
and Domosh (1998) discuss the doctrine of
separate spheres for men and women in both a spatial and ideological context,
with particular attention paid to the changing contours of the relationship
between gender divisions and distinctions between public and private spaces.In
this sophisticated essay, the authors examine one of the classic themes
and problems of feminist literature, the conflicts between women's use
of public and private space.
As
the new century unfolds, geographers are debating the way in which, or
even in some cases if, the subject of gender and culture should be analyzed.Although
geographers with an interest in gender are increasingly addressing cultural
topics, much of this research is not always recognized, much less endorsed,
by all adherents of cultural geography.The
following section examines how feminist geography has advanced our understanding
of contemporary cultural geography through its incorporation of gender,
identity, and representation in social spaces.
This critique of essentialist and unified notions of gender and space also contributes to analyses of the links between identity and methodology.As outlined above, feminist methodology attempts to break down separations between the identities of the researcher and the researched in order to convey the ways in which they are intertwined (often in very specific power relations) and to illustrate the ways in which methods and theories shape the means by which knowledge, spaces, and identities are constructed (Domosh 1989; Nast 1994; Dyck 1995).In sum, feminist geographers have built on critiques of class, gender, and patriarchy by breaking down the categories of women/men by race, gender, class, sexuality, and nationality.These critiques highlight the constantly shifting nature of these identities across categories and at different moments in different places (Bondi 1993; England 1994; Pratt and Hanson 1994).
A
considerable amount of debate in feminist geography has also focused on
the dangers of a depoliticized postmodern geography that fails fully to
analyze the situated knowledges of various
marginalized groups, e.g. poor women, people with disabilities, children,
gays and lesbians, and women of color (Deutsche 1991; Massey 1991; Pile
and Rose 1992; Gibson-Graham 1994). Feminist geographers are increasingly
asking questions about what we mean by difference, how we represent fluid
identities, and what options are there for feminist politics.The
move towards a fuller understanding of identity and space has reflected
an effort to shift away from representations of the two as static and separate,
and toward an exploration of the ways in which identities and spaces are
discursively (re)created.At the same
time, within feminist geography there have been concerns about encouraging
effective (and nuanced) feminist praxis while broadening the impact of
feminist theories within the discipline. Barbara Morehouse suggests, “Thinking
from the perspective of the dilemmas of postmodernism, I see a major point
of contention being how to resolve the tensions between the tendency to
pursue an exclusivist focus in feminist geography versus a need to place
feminist geography within larger contexts, as one of many perspectives
and forms of experience, without losing the power of feminist critiques.”
More
recently, feminist geographers have increasingly shifted their focus towards
post-structuralist modes of inquiry (Natter
and Jones 1993; Jones and Moss 1995; Lawson 1995; Mouffe
1992; Pile and Thrift 1995).Post-structuralist
research has involved a thorough analysis of the use of language and the
way in which discourse becomes a key means to communicate and recreate
identities and space. Representation, therefore, becomes the mediator and
medium through which identities and spaces are (re)produced.In
addition, feminist post-structuralists emphasize
the impossibility of a unified subject, a “fixed” means of knowing, or
the separation of the material and representational. Post-structuralist
research does have some commonality with postmodernism in that both use
deconstruction as one of their keys modes of analysis, i.e. they critique
truth claims embedded within a narrative to unearth inconsistencies and
contradictions that are not always explicitly represented.This
work has drawn extensively from research outside the discipline, particularly
in the area of cultural studies, the
This
literature also examines the uneven power relations between women in different
social positions by drawing on a range of cultural and social theory (including
post-structuralism) that analyze multiple subjectivities and sites of gendered
identities (e.g. Mohanty 1988; McDowell
1991; Katz 1992; hooks 1991).A key
body of work within this area has addressed the gendered nature of national
identities and transnational links within gender and geography (Nash 1994; Nagar
1997) that includes a reevaluation of the discipline’s imperial past, e.g.
through an examination of travel writing and historiography.Feminist
historical geography has played an important role in interrogating the
ways in which gendered geographies have been reformulated in various contexts.In
this literature, increased attention is given to the various social and
physical “borders” that are created and reproduced to maintain specific
gendered and racialized identities through
immigration, nationalism, the impacts of colonialism, and human rights
(Blunt 1994; Blunt and Rose 1994; Fenster
1998; Mains 2000; Morin and Guelke 1998).Overall,
post-colonialism has provided insight to the means by which Western subjectivities
have been constructed, the uneven power relations within and beyond the
academy, and the ways in which gender, ethnicity, and nationalism have
been reproduced through a variety of sociospatial
relations.
Critical analyses of masculinity and representation are increasingly included in analyses of gay and lesbian identities in urban and rural spaces (Berg 1994; Knopp 1995; Rothenberg 1995), and heterosexuality and psychoanalysis (Blum 1998; Lukinbeal and Aitken 1998; Nast 1998). Drawing on the work of Foucault and queer studies, feminist geographers have explored the relationships between sexuality and space to reveal a vast array of multiple identities and negotiations of identity and geography.For example, while exploring the ways in which discussions of capitalism and market forces have been reproduced, Gibson-Graham (1996) highlight the gendered nature of these discourses, and the usefulness of queer theories for breaking down existing hegemonic forms of analysis. Drawing on the work of Eve Sedgwick, Gibson-Graham argues that the tools for undertaking a rethinking of capitalism and economic development are already present in analyses of sexual morphology.“For queer theorists, sexual identity is not automatically derived from certain organs or practices or genders butis instead a space of transivity” which offer opportunities to subvert “monolithic representations of capitalism” (Gibson-Graham 1996: 140). Therefore, although often regarded as private, feminist geographers have shown the ways in which sexuality is frequently monitored (and disciplined) in very public relations and spaces.Nast and Pile (1998: 3) comment, “The body is both mobile and channeled, both fluid and fixed, into places,” and as such, they illustrate the uniqueness and commonalities in the way we experience and reproduce space through a negotiation of bodies and places.
One
of the most important topics that medical geographers have been concerned
with is the spatial diffusion and socioeconomic characteristics of people
infected with the HIV virus and AIDS.Most
of the work by medical geographers has been concerned with mapping disease
transmission and patterns (see Gould 1991; Shannon and Pyle 1989). While
this is important to know for public health policy, feminist medical geographers
have gone a step further to analyze the social production and interpretation
of women’s health and illness with regard to HIV/AIDS.
While
feminist research in medical geography lags behind contributions made by
feminist medical anthropologists, sociologists, and cultural studies scholars,
a growing number of geographers are concerned with issues of representation,
the female body, and health care policy.For
example, New Geographies of Women’s Health, edited by Dycket
al. (2001) brings together feminist scholars to problematize
the intersections of race, ethnicity, class, and gender as they pertain
to women’s health. This is the first volume devoted entirely to feminist
medical geography.It includes such
topics as globalization and women’s health, health-care access, the embodiment
of health and illness, perceptions, and the role of place.In
addition, medical geographers are integrating traditional geographic research
methods with qualitative methods to create a more comprehensive understanding
of disease and health (Barron McBride 1993; Dyck
and Kearns 1995).Drawing from this
integrative approach, Davis Lewis and Kieffer
(1994) call for the expansion of research to include not only women’s reproductive
health but also the quality of life throughout the entire life cycle in
a context that addresses physical, mental, social, and economic health.
Feminist
pedagogy and teaching occupies a significant proportion of our professional
lives, yet until recently it has not been a major area of research in gender
geography.The majority of work that
has been done on this topic addresses the inclusion of gender, sexuality,
and feminism in geography curricula (Knopp 1999;
McDowell 1997; Monk 1985), gender and student learning in the classroom
(Nairn 1995; 1997), and the use of feminist
methodology for student projects (Madge 1994; Raghuram
et al.1998).Additionally,
research on geography curricula has taken the form of multidisciplinary
projects such as the National Council for Geographic Education’s Finding
a Way project funded by National Science Foundation.This
extensive project educates secondary education teachers about gender and
multicultural issues in the geography curriculum (Monk 1997; Sanders (forthcoming).While
research such as this has been useful in advancing geographic education,
especially for women and minorities, a comprehensive and critical analysis
of feminist pedagogy in geography is long overdue.Consequently,
many feminist geographers draw from the growing literature on pedagogy
in women’s studies to inform their teaching methods and approach.
Two
topics will be explored in this section.The
first topic is a critical analysis of the institutional frameworks in which
we practice feminist pedagogy and teaching.These
institutions include the discipline of geography, the academic setting
of universities or colleges, and geography curricula.The
discussion examines the status of women, feminism and gender studies in
each of these institutions.The second
topic addresses ways in which feminism is applied in the classroom.The
analysis focuses on implementing inclusive, participatory approaches in
feminist teaching within these different institutional contexts.The
discussion includes a critical evaluation of feminist pedagogy and provides
suggestions for future research.
Figure
1. The Status of Women in Geography
Four
measures depicting the status of women include their membership in the
AAG, level of education, employment in universities, and their status as
students.Overall, women comprise
a relatively small, but increasing proportion of geographers in all these
categories.The proportion of AAG
members who are women has increased significantly from 15.4% in 1974 to
nearly 28.9% in 1997 (AAG 1998).The
percentage of female geographers who are employed in universities, however,
has increased slowly, from 24.4% in 1981 to 31.7% in 1997 compared to 49%
of male geographers. This is partly due to the fact that a greater proportion
of females in this organization are students or work in private industry.In
fact, the percentage of female students is not only increasing at a faster
rate than that of female faculty, it is also growing faster than that of
male students (AAG 1998).
In general, the presence of female faculty members is important to mentor students in the discipline, in addition to promoting curriculum changes and introducing more inclusive approaches to teaching.The need to improve the status of women as a means of promoting feminist issues in the discipline and academic institutions was found among several of the survey respondents.Jennifer Hyndman noted the difference between the department where she obtained her degree and her current department where she is a faculty member.She states, “I work in an interdisciplinary department where well over 50% of the faculty are women and 30% are people of colour.It is an unusual but dynamic and comfortable mix.”In contrast, the climate in departments with no women or only a few is more likely to be uncomfortable or alienating for women, as well as for gays and lesbians and minorities.
Focusing
on women, however, overlooks the potential contributions of men who encourage
females to apply for grants, mentor them, or provide other means of support
for their active participation in the discipline.For
example, one respondent who wished to remain anonymous attributed her early
interest in women in development to two male professors in her department
during a time when there were few women.She
credits these professors with being open-minded enough to consider a feminist
pursuit when this was not at all common.
Finally,
although women may be hired as faculty, as has been the case in many top
departments in the country, attitudes towards women, feminism and diversity
are sometimes slow to change.The
survey question about how departments or universities have changed as a
result of increasing awareness of gender issues in the discipline drew
this cautious response from the graduate student Deborah Martin:
There
have certainly been changes in how fellowships and teaching assistantships
are awarded, in recognition of the influence of the 'boy’s network' on
past decisions and attempts to reduce gender bias.I
think that there are still plenty of personal biases against certain types
of gender and post-structuralist research, but
the institutionalized bias against it is much reduced.
Thus, while the numbers reflect a growing presence of women, feminist approaches in teaching and research face continued resistance among certain faculty and students.
Curriculum
is another important area where feminist approaches have changed the content
of and material used in courses in both secondary and higher education.The
Additionally,
more texts are being written for use in feminist geography courses.One
series that was mentioned by several survey respondents as contributing
significantly to the subfield is Routledge's
International Studies of Women and Place, edited by Janet Momsen
and Janice Monk.Other books that
are useful in gender geography courses are Thresholds in Feminist Geography
by Jones et al. (1997) and Feminist Geographies by the Women
and Geography Study Group (1997).The
next decade will certainly see the options for teaching materials expand,
particularly on the Internet where a wide variety of gender and feminist
resources is available and will be increasingly incorporated into courses.2
The
presence of a single or a few courses in gender geography, however, only
partially fulfills the objective of feminist teaching and pedagogy.The
goal is to incorporate gender in nearly every course since it is an integral
part of political, urban, economic, and other subfields of geography.Again,
this goal faces resistance by some members of the discipline.As
Deborah Martin commented, 'there is recognition that gender issues need
to be incorporated into our curriculum, although the completeness of that
enterprise is yet to be seen(not
everyone has taken gender perspectives on board in their classroom; some
view it as the domain and responsibility of a few profs in a few classes).”
Expanding
pedagogical discussions to include sexuality and queer studies as well
as gender has only recently gained attention in academic arenas.For
example, The Journal of Geography in Higher Education's recently
published the papers from a symposium on the implications of using queer
theory in the geography classroom and other forms of professional practice
(Knopp 1999).The
authors analyze how dominant cultural values enter the classroom in both
positive and negative ways as social relations and institutions are examined
from critical, anti-heterosexist perspectives (Elder 1999; England 1999).Additionally,
students are sometimes resistant to the inclusion of gender and sexuality
in courses that are not perceived as relevant to feminist analyses.For
example, a faculty member who responded to the survey commented that absence
among males was considerably higher than usual when she covered the topic
of gender in her political geography course.In
sum, although the chilly climate is improving for feminists in the institutional
frameworks of the discipline, colleges, universities, and geography curricula,
there is continued resistance to gender and feminist approaches in the
academy.
I
am very committed to student-centered learning and encouraging all students
to speak in my class.I try very much
to be a facilitator rather than the all-knowing professor.This
requires lots of advanced organizing and planning, and also requires a
great deal of “tongue biting” on my part during some classes!My
teaching evaluations usually indicate that the students really like this
approach and appreciate the opportunity to shape their own learning.I
use inclusive language and wherever possible use examples that draw on
difference and diversity.
I
try to build self-awareness, or “consciousness raising” into my classroom,
as an active-learning pedagogy that’s informed by feminism.I
don’t want students to think that whatever they think is valid regardless
of evidence, but I want their experiences to be legitimated in the classroom
and to be part of critical thinking and analysis. (Deborah Martin, survey
response).
These
quotes underscore the ethical and political concerns that permeate feminist
teaching, research, and other professional activities.Specifically,
they represent a particular approach to feminist pedagogy and teaching
that is sensitive to hierarchical power relations and supportive of students'
direct involvement in the learning process (McDowell 1994; Monk 1996).
An
important aspect of feminist pedagogy is the mentoring that occurs outside
the classroom and the expectation that feminist teachers are accessible
to students.Although the rewards
are great, there are also personal sacrifices involved in this type of
commitment. Pamela Moss expressed
concern over the personal toll that being a feminist in geography is taking
on women in the discipline as they continue to battle for acceptance and
recognition.Another respondent stated
As I have increasingly become aware of, and struggled to resist, the masculinist practices within the discipline itself, I’ve found myself in a series of ethical dilemmas.I’ve found that being a feminist in geography is often a contradictory experience.For me, it was quite a surprising realization, because I had previously thought the construction industry, which I worked in for many years, was far more sexist than academia could ever be. (AlthaCravey, survey response).
In
addition to the dominance of masculinist practices in academia that can
be alienating, feminists are experiencing the negative impacts of the academy
taking on a more 'pragmatic', business approach to education and research.
In
conclusion, this section addresses the institutional aspects of our teaching
and pedagogy that include the status of women in geography, the academic
institutions where we teach and do research, and curriculum in feminist
geography.While some research has
looked at gender issues in education and curriculum, feminist pedagogy
remains a relatively understudied area of research in feminist geography.The
strategies we have developed in our teaching, however, have been informed
by our research and broader feminist beliefs in addressing issues that
challenge barriers to women's empowerment inside and outside academia.
Future
Directions for Feminist Geographies
As
can be seen in previous sections, feminist geography has expanded tremendously
during the last decade.In addition
to its separate identity as a geographical subfield, its presence has grown
to varying degrees within traditional specialty areas of geography such
as economic, cultural, historical, urban, and development geographies,
among others. Feminist geography has been central to the initiation and
expansion of a range of new approaches and topics such as post-colonial
theory, identity/representation/space, feminist political ecology, and
geographies of the body.Furthermore,
it has played a central role in redefining what it means “to do” geographical
research, both methodologically and analytically.
Yet,
each of these categories highlights gaps and opportunities for future research
and the realization of feminist goals. For example, within traditional
cultural geography, and despite extensive feminist work in the “new” cultural
geography, there is still a need for work that will allow feminist theory
to be fully recognized, valued, and incorporated into that area. Within
economic geography, continued feminist analysis and activism can perhaps
contribute to the formation of emancipatory
institutions within the arena of work.Within
development and globalization, new global spatial forms present an enormous
opportunity for geographers to influence the directions of the production
of knowledge and constructions of political action, both within geography
and within the cross- and multidisciplinary setting.
Within
other traditional specialty areas, broader opportunities exist for feminist
analysis, for example, within political geography and rural studies. Within
GIS, which is one of the fastest-growing areas in geography, concern for
social issues has emerged within the last decade, but without much attention
by feminist geographers.Another underrepresented
arena for feminist geographers is the domain of physical geography. Although
there has been little cross-fertilization between human and physical geography,
an important entry point for this project exists within cultural and political
ecologies, which address environment/society relations, and especially
within various feminist environmentalisms, including feminist political
ecology.
Within
feminist geography, several concerns and issues remain open for attention
and debate. First, feminist geographers have illustrated the need to rethink
gendered geographies as meaning more than women’s places, which is reflected
in a gradually growing amount of research addressing spaces of masculinity,
as well as an increasing emphasis on multiple, intersecting vectors of
identity within feminist theory of difference.This
reorientation introduces the crucial question of the prioritization of
gender within the feminist frame of analysis. Another key issue that has
surfaced along with the growing array of theoretical perspectives in feminist
geography has been the challenge of providing a “common ground” or nodal
points from which constructive dialog among feminist geographers can continue.
In general, both within specialty areas and across geography, there is
a need for more comparative research, on an intradisciplinary
level, cross-culturally, and across multiple spatial scales. A final crucial
debate within feminist geography addresses the ghettoization
of feminist geography. Should it maintain a separate presence, both conceptually
and within its own specialty group; or should it ultimately permeate all
subfields, curriculums and courses?
Within
the professional arena, we have highlighted the importance of the academic
institution as a venue for accomplishing broader feminist objectives, and
have seen that important progress has been made in that arena. Yet, important
work still remains to be accomplished around the status of women, feminism,
and diversity within the institutional framework. This includes expanding
the number of positions available to women and feminists;and
expanding gender and feminist approaches in courses and curricula, texts
and teaching materials, and pedagogy.
Looking
beyond the discipline, several issues address the relationship between
feminist geography, other academic disciplines, and other research collaborators.
As evidenced by several respondents to the survey, feminist geography had
not realized its potential to inform feminist studies and other fields
outside the discipline, instead of vice versa.Continued extradisciplinary
influence can be accomplished through judicious choice of publication venues,
and feminist geographers should continue to be open to multidisciplinary
collaboration. Feminist geography is diversifying methods of study and
redefining boundaries between different subjects.The
conceptual frameworks and methodological approaches involved in this type
of critical research are complex and multiple, and offer fruitful prototypes
for collaboration.
Extending
beyond the academic arena, important issues raised in feminist geography,
especially in methodology, pedagogy, and the broad area of gender, identity,
and space, offer potential insights into ways that feminist geography can
influence praxis and the political arena. These ideas include the interconnection
of academic and activist identities, using feminist identities and spaces
to retheorize hegemonic geographies, and
interrogating geographies of both the left and the right in ways that challenge
the reproduction of these categories.
Nonetheless,
it is important to consider the delicate questions of how these opportunities
and investigations should be negotiated with our colleagues around the
world. The growing diversity of voices and attention to a broad range of
identities within gender/feminist geography intersect with important questions
about developments of technology and power relations which will allow people
on the margins to speak for themselves.This
phenomenon raises serious questions about the long-term role of feminist
geographers as the primary interpreters or channels of knowledge.Some
would argue that the role of western academics should disappear in this
arena as native researchers and activists step to the fore and claim their
rightful power.Alternatively, this
begs the question of how this process will be integrated into the existing
context, and how we as feminist researchers and activists can facilitate
an expansion of knowledge and power.Our
choice of research questions, our methodological techniques, and the relationships
between academics, pedagogy, and activism all play an important role in
how we answer these questions.
The
final decade of the millennium seems an appropriate time for feminist geographers
to challenge dominant concepts of economic restructuring, cultural landscapes,
gender and development, identity and space, and other important geographical
concerns.Although feminist geography
is not without its issues, as one survey respondent commented, ‘I’m reluctant
to make forecasts of the future. However, I will say that as long as feminist
geographers continue to address issues that make real differences in women’s
lives, and are willing to work towards empowerment of marginalized women
inside and outside of academia, the future of feminist geography will be
bright.’
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|
|
Theoretical
approaches
|
Methodological
concerns
|
Selected research topics
|
|
Women
in geography
|
“Counting”
women
The
geography of women Feminist
empiricism |
Mapping
spatial patterns ofwomen’s activities
and status
Challenging
positivist research |
Women
in the city
Women
and employment Women
and development |
|
Socialist
feminism
|
Socialist
Feminism Marxism
Gender
and Development |
Historical
materialism Combining theory and praxis
|
Relationships
between patriarchy and capitalism
Spatial
and social structures of home and workplace Gender
roles in the third world |
|
Third
world feminism/
politics
of difference |
PoststructuralismPostcolonialism
Race
theory |
Discourse
analysis
Participatory
research Life
histories Politics
of fieldwork |
Challenge
essentialist and Eurocentric forms of knowledge
Gender
planning and development Differences
across the life course |
|
Feminism
and ‘new’ cultural geography
|
Queer
theory
Postmodernism Psychoanalytical
theory Cultural
representation |
Positionality
and reflexivity
Textual
analysis Narratives Ethnography |
Situated
knowledge
Sexuality
and space The
body and identity politics Imaginary
and symbolic spaces |
Source:
Johnston, et al. 1994; Jones, Nast, and Roberts 1997; WGSG 1997
2 In the
1990s, several online resources have been developed that provide information
and facilitate communication among those interest if feminist geography.
The Department of Geography at the