Gender, genetics and the possibility of feminist geography

Abstract

In a recent review article on the state of the geographical art, Jeans and Davies (1 984) mentioned women four times: as potential or actual paid workers (pp. 16, 18) and as actual or potential writers of geography (pp. 20, 22). The absence of any serious consideration of women as geographers or as the special focus of geographical study is no surprise in a review article-for there is little work to report on. However, the omission of any references to this situation or any assessment of what has been left out of the last decade of geographical work in Australia perpetuates the problem. Geography silently continues to claim a universal focus when in content, method and purpose it is primarily concerned with the male experience. Over the last ten years the neglect of women in anthropology, sociology and philoxphy h-s been recognised and all have been revitalised by an injection of feminist thought. Geography has lagged behind this trend but is now fitfully going through the phases of criticism and reconceptualisation experienced by other disciplines. The first phase began in 1973 with women's absence from the profession and its theories noted in a number of papers published in North America. The second concurrent phase has produced a small body of literature concerned specifically with including women in geographical knowledge. It was recognised in this phase that studies of 'human behaviour' had more often been of male behaviour and were therefore not gender neutral. Gender specific studies of, for example, consumer behaviour or of the journey to work thus undermined many of the models of 'human behaviour' devised previously. The third phase has barely begun in geography. This phase involves a critique of the epistemology and status quo politics of geographical knowledge using the insights and political objectives of the women's movement. This article will be concerned with detailing these three phases, considering whether singly, or together, they constitute 'feminist geography'. My sources will be that body of literature written by geographers in accessible, discipline-oriented publications. PHASE ONE-WOMEN'S ABSENCE IN GEOGRAPHYAs a discipline, geography is distinguished by its concern with the spatial relations of 'man and the environment'. In the early 1970s it was recognised that 'man' in this phase was not a generic term but an accurate description of the discipline's demography and research bias (Mazey and Lee, 1983,51). Two sets of papers appeared in 1973 in quite different geographical journals in the United States which heralded this new awareness. These papers signalled two of the directions feminist critiques in geography would take-one set by Wilbur Zelinsky in a conservative journal, the others by Pat Burnett and Irene Bruegel in the newly established 'radical journal of geography', Antipode.

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

“…(Cockburn I98 I , Game and Pringle 1983) Anti-racism workshop Aboriginal women's spaces via John Pilger and Women of the Sun videos. (Bell, 1983;Gale, 1983;1985) Maori women's spaces. Time at Te Whare Poura (Maori Women's Centre).…”

“…) Feminist geography as critique and construct. (Bowlby and MacKenzie, 1982;Johnson, 1985) The historical construction of key dichotomiespubliclprivate. mindlbody, nature/culture, male/female.…”

“…Stephanie Fahey's recent survey of Australian geographers (1987;1988) joins a number of other evaluations of the discipline to confirm an ongoing male dominance in what purports to be 'Human' geography (Zelinsky, 1973;McDowell, 1979;Rubin 1979;Monk and Hanson, 1982;Howe, 1984; Women and Geography Study Group of the IBG, 1984;Johnson, 1985). Many questions emerged from Fahey's inspection of the discipline, but two have been of particular importance in the literature and have been of immediate relevance in my efforts to develop undergraduate courses in feminist geography:…”

“…(Zelinsky, Monk and Hanson, 1982) Traditions in feminist geography-Liberal, radical and socialist geography. (Johnson, 1985) Liberalism and liberal feminism in geography. (Mill, 18691 1973;Wollstonecraft I792/ 1973;Zelinsky, 1973) Socialist feminism (Marx, 18481 I97 I ;Engels.…”

Gender In Third World Development Studies: An Overview Of An Underview

“…Fahey (1988,209) maintains that a major reason for this has been the predominance of men in the discipline and their lack of recognition of gender as an important variable. Johnson (1985) states that the problem of incorporating gender into geography is related to the discipline itself and that as gender-related problems are not usually amenable to spatial solutions researchers do not consider any explanation based on gender necessary.…”