New Courses For A Gendered Geography: Teaching Feminist Geography At The University Of Waikato

An argument for a transformative feminist geography rather than a less radical gender geography anchors a discussion of two undergraduate courses developed at the University of Waikato. It is suggested that a consideration of gender in geography marginalises feminist scholarship, fosters a goal of androgyny and a politics of equality. As a result, putting gender into geography could well just add ‘women's concerns’ into an unaltered discipline and deflect the feminist focus on women's oppression and patriarchal power. The challenge then, is to create a geography which has feminism at its centre, to formulate an alternative discourse which critiques but also reconstructs the theories, concepts, subjects, politics and pedagogy of the discipline The second year course ‘Women in Australasia: Gendering Space’ and the third year course ‘Feminist Geography: Critique and Construct’ are attempts at creating such a feminist geography.     

Gender geography in Japan: the trajectory,fruits of research and future challenges

Abstract

The indication by female geographers outside of Japan that, due to the original dearth of female geographers, a gender perspective had been missing from geography held true for Japan as well. In 1993, Yoshida was the first person to discuss the importance of a gender perspective in a Japanese journal of geography. Nearly 25 years have passed since its publication, and the aim of this paper is to investigate what developments have taken place in Japanese geography on gender research. As the accomplishments of feminist geography in English-speaking countries was merely ‘imported’ to Japan around 1990, there is no firm starting point of ‘feminist’ geography, which originated in women’s liberation movement of the 1970s, in the country. Rather, it can be said that Japanese geographers, regardless of sex, undertake gender geography, which does not limit a particular sex as the sole subject and/or object of research. The results of research on gender geography by men geographers began to appear from the year 2000. The use of life history method emerged as a trend in research since 2000. While there has been gradual progress in research on gender geography in Japan, the number of researchers are still by no means large. While Japanese geography has hitherto involved a one-way absorption of the fruits of overseas research on gender/feminist geographies, at least based on studies that have already accumulated in Japan, it is now necessary that Japanese study results also be communicated to overseas.     

Reinforcing Diversity: From the ‘inside’ and the ‘outside’

This paper focuses on Jan Monk's contribution to reinforcing diversity and collaboration in the field of human geography. It illustrates how gendered diversity and feminism is promoted in her academic work both inside the Anglo-American academic world and outside, by exposing the feminist voices from around the world and mainstreaming them in her collaborative work. Fostering and reinforcing diversity has become a body of knowledge in her extensive publications in which she assesses the varying extent and nature of feminist geography in the Anglophone world and across countries, attempting to interpret differences in terms of geographical and cultural contexts and disciplinary trends. The paper emphasizes how fostering diversity and collaboration in Jan's academic work is not only about writing articles, editing books and producing a film, but also engages the formulation of organizational structures such as the Routledge book series and the initiation and establishment of the Commission of Gender and Geography of the International Geographical Union which have contributed to the production of collaborative feminist geographical knowledge across spaces and places.     

Fighting for recognition: feminist geography in East-Central Europe

In East-Central Europe (ECE), the evolution of feminist geographies began after the end of state socialism. Aiming to identify individual and shared characteristics, this study outlines the development of gender/feminist geography in East-Central European countries. Providing a brief historical overview, the first part of the article substantiates the arguments that i) the evolution of feminist geography in ECE is linked to the post-socialist transition; although the fall of state socialism has removed the political, social and ideological obstacles that prevented its gaining ground, this approach is still considered to be relatively new; and ii) today, development is hindered mainly by conservative mainstream geography, which seems slower in transforming itself than in some related disciplines which have ‘embraced’ gender studies. The topics, methods and theories of feminist geography that have developed in ECE is significantly influenced by the resistance that advocates of feminist geography have to contend with from representatives of mainstream post-socialist geographies. The second part of the article presents the major characteristics of gender/feminist geography in Europe's post-socialist region, while providing an outline of the various methods used in an attempt to earn positive recognition for gender studies. The concluding section maps some lessons to be learnt on the relationship between the production of feminist geographical knowledge and post-socialism.     

GPC Ten Years On: is self-reflexivity enough?

In the 10 years since the first issue of Gender, Place and Culture was published, feminist geography has grown, matured, become part of the normal curriculum in most departments of geography. The need to consider gender as a fundamental aspect of social life has become accepted wisdom. We have much to celebrate. Over the same period, increasing attention has been paid to questions of racialisation, and to projects that set anti-racism on the academic agenda. While I would argue that, socially as well as academically, we have made more progress in overcoming gender barriers than racial barriers, a growing body of work recognises the intersection, indeed the simultaneity, of sexism and racism, as well as classism, ableism and homophobia. Such recognition has characterised the pages of Gender, Place and Culture from its very first issue. Indeed, no paper that addresses issues of social exclusion from a geographical perspective would fail nowadays to make several references to articles in this journal. Theoretically, the connection between gendered and racialised social constructions heightens social awareness of the ways in which social exclusion occurs. It is now received wisdom, well beyond the narrower confines of feminist and anti-racist scholarship, that human attributes are the result of social construction and, while many controversies rage over the findings—and the social effects—of the postmodern ‘turn’, this fundamental theoretical tenet is hardly questioned by intellectuals of the early twenty-first century. Broader attention has now been focused on issues of what kind of society—and what kind of theoretical underpinnings—will replace a world in which social constructions such as gender and ‘race’ are taken for granted. Perhaps the most significant general trend of the last decade, then, has been the fact that our journal has played such an active role in the transition from the early 1990s' struggle to overcome essential ideas to today's struggle to re-place essential ideas with a new geometry of human relations. Significant historical events on every social front emphasise the difficulties of that transition, both theoretically and empirically.     

Composing our careers: Susan Hanson's contributions to geography and geographers

Susan Hanson's career exemplifies the notion that our lives are compositions rather than predictable, linear trajectories. In this essay I argue that Susan's career is an empowering example of a collage of woven-together life experiences, substantive research interests, feminist values and progressive professional practices. I illustrate these ideas through three compositions that I trace throughout Susan's career: networking gender; caring geography; and reproducing geography. Susan's work connects and validates the diverse elements of our lives through her scholarship, her commitment to feminist values and her disciplinary leadership.     

Feminist geographies in Greece: a personal trajectory between ‘local’ and ‘international’

Abstract

Feminist debates in the context of an active women's/feminist movement found their way into the Greek academy in the second half of the 1970s, initially in history. Urban studies and geography were ‘late-comers’ in these debates which took place in different disciplinary environments where geography courses were taught. The article presents a personal account in and through the development of feminist approaches in urban geography, drawing from my teaching and research experience since 1982 in a department of urban and regional planning. This experience has been accumulated as a hard exercise in navigating through the denial and reluctant consent of various levels of administration, students’ changing acceptance, some women’s valuable active support, in the university and beyond, and other colleagues’ opposition or indifference. In this process, recent and longer-term developments have contributed to form a (continuously negotiated and contested) space for feminism, for tolerance, diversity and difference, in which a ‘we’ has been tortuously formed which speaks across worlds, participates in a plurality of communities, communicates in more than one languages and in a plurality of voices between ‘local’ and ‘international’.     

Gender and geography in the Netherlands: from separation to integration

Abstract

This article reports on the development of feminist geography in the Netherlands in the past forty years. In response to critical feminist students, feminist geography originally developed in a strategy of separation with the appointment of university lecturers specialized in ‘women’s studies’, the introduction of elective courses and research projects, and the creation of national networks. Gender is currently more and more integrated in core geography teaching and mainstream geographical research and separate networks are dissolved. Although feminist geographers in the Netherlands are successful in teaching, publishing and acquisition of research funding, gender issues and perspectives are still not firmly rooted in geography curricula and research programs. Integration is highly dependent on the feminist commitment of individual lecturers and researchers and gender perspectives are at risk of marginalisation or disappearance. Feminist geographers in the Netherlands must still be vigilant to preserve the achievements of forty years of Dutch feminist geography.     

Space,Gender and Institutions in Processes Creating Difference

Along with a number of scholars in feminist, English-language geography, the author makes a case for renewed attention to be paid to causal processes of differentiation in the analysis of geographies of gender. In particular, she argues for a greater concern with the gendered spatiality of organisations and institutions themselves, rather than seeing them as ‘black boxes’, or unchanging and exogenous aspects of the contexts to be analysed. The paper discusses the manner and the extent to which feminist geographies have examined differentiating processes associated with three notional ‘sites’ examined closely in feminist geography: the city, the family and the nation.     

The emergence and institutionalization of feminist geography in Ghana

Abstract

The emergence and institutionalization of feminist geography in Ghana was in tandem with the global feminist movement in the 1970s and its subsequent international women’s conferences. This paper discusses the pioneering work and research at the Department of Geography and Resource Development, University of Ghana, and its effect on the institutionalization and diffusion of feminist geography in Ghana. Through research and external collaborations, the need for gender as an academic discipline was strongly argued for and instituted as an undergraduate course at the Department of Geography and Resource Development, University of Ghana. These external collaborations with other feminist geographers in international geography associations and universities served as a boost as they created opportunities for highlighting the spatial variations in the role and situation of particularly women’s lives in Ghana. Subsequently, there was a diffusion of feminist geography research and its institutionalization as an academic sub-discipline in Geography departments in other Ghanaian universities. These notwithstanding, the departments of Geography in Ghanaian universities are still dominated by male faculty members. Moreover, research work has been mainly in the field of human geography more than the physical aspects calling for the mainstreaming of gender issues in all the systematic branches of the discipline.     

An interview with Anne Buttimer: an autobiographical window on geographical thought and practice 1965–2005

Anne Buttimer's 40 years of geographical publications have been influential and international in scope. She has also played an important institutional role within the International Geographical Union, culminating in her presidency 2000–2004. The relative invisibility of women's geographical work in histories of the discipline needs to be redressed and it is hoped that this interview might contribute to that wider project. After a brief biographical sketch, the bulk of the article is devoted to an (auto)biographical interview, which addresses Buttimer's work on social geography, values in geography, the humanist and phenomenological schools, the Dialogue Project, and environmental issues, as well as her own gendered career experience and perspectives on gender issues. While Buttimer does not deem herself a theoretical feminist per se, her work has shown sensitivity to gender issues through her concern for the human perspective on geographical issues and knowledge.     

Generative spaces of gender and feminist geography in Singapore: entanglements of the personal and political

Abstract

While geographers’ work in Southeast Asia has yet to engage substantively with theoretical developments in gender/feminist studies generated by Anglo-American academic centers, we argue that Singapore has proven to be somewhat of an exception. Focusing on the National University of Singapore, this article discusses how the development of gender and feminist geography in Singapore has benefitted from being able to engage with international debates in feminism through the country’s and NUS’ internationalization efforts, and working in the English language. Using the notion of generative spaces, we highlight first, the importance of using our teaching to engage in feminist activism to encourage feminist change in the classroom, as well as within our immediate communities and further afield; and second, the nascent yet significant contributions of feminist geographers based in Singapore to feminist theorization from and about the Global South.     

Feminist geography,the ‘everyday’, and local–global relations: hidden spaces of place‐making*

An interest in the taken‐for‐granted, mundane routine activities of women's lives has long been central to the production of knowledge in feminist geography. Here, I revisit the ‘everyday’ in relation to changing lines of inquiry as geographers work to capture the complexity of local–global relations in conceptualising an accelerated pace of the stretching of social relations over space. Through a primary focus on feminist work on care in the home, I explore the various ways in which the meanings and organisation of caregiving activity are intricately connected with the intertwining of globalisation, neoliberalism, social conservatism and a ‘greying’ population in the West. Foregrounding gender in my discussion, I review literature and draw on research examples to illustrate ways in which various types of ‘hidden’ caregiving contribute to contemporary place‐making, and open up our understanding of the ‘local’.     

‘But this is not geography…! of ontological circumcisions and writing feminist geographies from India

Abstract

Feminist geography still remains at the margins of human geography in India. The space occupied by the subfield, the nature of research and the skepticism routinely encountered by feminist geographers ‘doing gender’ in India all point to this marginal status. Drawing upon detailed status reports, personal communications and everyday encounters with patriarchy in the academy, this essay uses an autobiographical lens to address the pervasiveness of misogyny and the politics of gendered parochial and caste-based gatekeeping to make sense of the peculiar but marked ‘ontological circumcision’ of feminist geographies in India. ‘Coming out’ as a feminist geographer and writing gender from such locations is political and should be read as a resistance to these caste-ridden, male dominated and inherently misogynistic contexts.     

Earth Mother Myths and Other Ecofeminist Fables: How a Strategic Notion Rose and Fell

The notion that women are ‘closer to nature’, naturally caring for land, water, forests and other aspects of the environment, has held powerful sway in certain development circles since the 1980s. Along with the rise in global environmental concern, ‘women, environment and development’ (WED) perspectives gained ground among many donor agencies and NGOs, complementing and sharing core assumptions with earlier‐established ‘women in development’ (WID) discourses. The materialist dimensions of WED were bolstered by fables about women's natural, cultural or ideological closeness to nature grounded in varieties of ecofeminist analysis. This proved a seductive mix for agencies wishing simultaneously to promote environmental protection and WID, as well as for certain forms of feminist activism and sisterhood‐construction, such as those around the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development. This contribution revisits these narratives and the politics of this strategic fix in the development of international environmentalism and explores the sustained critiques of these ecofeminist fables by feminist scholars and activists from the early 1990s onwards. It provides a critical review of the approach to gender and the environment in some current donor, NGO and other policy documents, which draw little from the feminist critiques of the 1990s. The author reflects on how, and for whom, women–nature links might have practical or strategic value today.     

Pre-deployment ‘gender’ training and the lack thereof for Australian peacekeepers

In the area of peacekeeping training, Australia has a reputation of promoting ‘best practice’ internationally. Training for Australian police peacekeepers has been described by the United Nations as ‘one-of-a-kind’ and ‘a world-class model of best practice’. This article provides a case study of how gender training is conducted, and how ‘gender’ is understood from a critical feminist perspective. This article focuses only on the pre-deployment training stage and is informed by confidential interviews with staff from the Australian Federal Police and the Australian Defence Force, as well as observing training in 2013–14. The findings suggest that the training is inadequate because it is not carried out for all peacekeeping personnel, despite international and national requirements to do so. In addition, the findings suggest that ‘gender’ is understood in a very limited way that does not problematise power relations between the sexes and is only covered as a way of understanding the peacekeeping context, and not in relation to the attitudes and behaviours of peacekeepers themselves. This raises the question of whether and how other troop-contributing countries conduct the training and to what standard, given the documented problems of Australia's supposedly ‘best-practice’ training.     

Gender as national interest at the UN Security Council

The United Nations Security Council has often been identified as a key actor responsible for the uneven trajectory of the international Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda. It is, however, the Council members—who also seek to advance their national interest at this intergovernmental forum—that are pivotal in the Council's deliberations and shape its policies. Yet, little attention has been paid to this aspect of deliberative politics at the Council in feminist scholarship on WPS. This article seeks to address this gap in the literature. It notes that gender has increasingly become part of foreign policy interests of UN member states, as evidenced by practices such as invocation of ‘women's rights’ and ‘gender equality’ in broader international security policy discourse. The article demonstrates that this national interest in gender has featured in WPS‐related developments at the Security Council. Using specific illustrations, it examines three sets of member states: the permanent and non‐permanent members as well as non‐members invited to take part in Council meetings. The main argument of this article relates to highlighting member states’ interests underpinning their diplomatic activities around WPS issues in the Security Council, with the aim to present a fuller understanding of political engagements with UNSCR 1325, the first WPS resolution, in its institutional home.     

A Feminist Literary Cartography of the Canadian North: Women,writing and place in Aritha van Herk's Places Far From Ellesmere

This article examines the idea of North in Aritha van Herk's (1990) Places Far From Ellesmere, a feminist rereading of Anna Karenin that is also an exploration of place—Ellesmere Island—and of gender, identity and belonging. I situate my reading of Ellesmere firstly within feminist literary theory, focusing on the concept of intertextuality and on the implications of the concept, from the perspective of feminist theorists, for the acts of writing and reading. I further contextualise van Herk's work by outlining the growing sensitivity to the complexities of writing Canadian space in Canadian literary criticism. The focus then shifts to Ellesmere, beginning with an investigation of van Herk's representational practices and philosophies, which are organised around a critique of the relationship between writing, gender and power. I argue that van Herk's insistence upon the power of feminist textual rereadings, an insistence that results from her aversion to authority, critically shapes her geographical imaginary, and her understanding of North. By extending the text and thereby the practice of reading to geography, van Herk makes possible a feminist representation or rereading of the North that simultaneously contests the conventions of literature, of place and of gender. Ultimately, I argue that it is van Herk's commitment to investigate the processes of representation in which she is engaged that makes her representation of the North such a valuable text for feminist and literary geographers.     

Suzanne MacKenzie Memorial LectureConceptually unclad: feminist geography and Aboriginal peoples*

This paper argues that feminist geography can provide some useful lessons in an attempt to increase Aboriginal peoples' representation in geography. It asks the question: How can we use the example of feminist geography to think about a geography that is more inclusive of Aboriginal people? The paper focuses on the issues of content in teaching, drawing on examples from urban and social geography, and on methodological challenges, especially the issue of reflexivity. Feminist geographer Suzanne Mackenzie argued that an emerging feminist geography left the discipline ‘conceptually unclad’, challenging scholars to consider new theoretical frameworks and new perspectives. I argue that emphasising the geographies of Aboriginal people also enriches geography, including feminist geography.     

Avoiding the “F” word: feminist geography in Iran

Abstract

Little attention has been given to how feminist geography is defined, applied, and taught in non-Anglophone countries, especially in Muslim majority societies where Women’s Rights are quite different from the western world. The case of Iran among other Middle Eastern countries becomes even more isolated due to the several political, linguistic, and cultural limitations opposed on Iranian academics and international collaborations after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Women make half of Iran’s 80 million population, 63% of university graduates, almost half of informal workers, 30% of Iranian professors, 13% of high level management position holders, and under 5% of the Islamic Majlis (Iran’s Parliament). However, feminist geography, the sub-discipline that has been traditionally dedicated to the inclusion of gender as an analytical lens within Geography, is not a recognized field at any departments in Iran. This essay aims to present the current status of feminist geographic research and teaching at selected Iranian Universities. My goal is to offer a better understanding of how the local social and political context affect what constitute feminist geographic work and how geographers navigate the political and hierarchal university systems to engage in gender studies. Through informal interviews via emails and Skype with several Iranian geographers, I illustrate why Iranian geographers often avoid using “feminist” terminology in recognizing their work, even though their work is feminist.