Women and Geography: A Review and Prospectus

Integrating Women into the Geography Curriculum

“…Over 350 programs and three dozen research institutes in women's studies exist in the United States, as well as many professional organizations, refereed national and international journals, and regular publications by major scholarly presses. Although work on women in geography has been substantially less than in some other disciplines, particularly history, literature, sociology, and anthropology, geographers have developed courses with titles such as "Women and place, women and space" and "Women and development," published course outlines and curriculum materials (Journal of Geography 1978; Rengert and Monk 1982;Drake 1983), compiled lists of references (Lee and Loyd 1981), and written review articles (Zelinsky, Monk, and Hanson 1982) to provide resources.…”

“…An effective way to implement curriculum integration is the faculty development workshop. Faculty are provided with opportunities to read and participate in discussions of scholarship on women, becoming familiar with critiques of traditional research and with the new work on women's experiences Zelinsky, Monk, and Hanson 1982).2Such projects usually include consultations with faculty who teach women's studies courses or with colleagues who are attempting curriculum integration. Transformed syllabi are now also available as models.…”

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

“…In her paper 'Place Matters: Comparative International Perspectives on Feminist Geography' (Monk, 1994) she assesses the varying extent and nature of feminist geography across countries, attempting to interpret differences in terms of cultural contexts and disciplinary trends. This work can be seen as a review of the 'outside', of non Anglo-American feminist writing, which is complementary to the earlier review paper (Zelinsky et al, 1982) that focuses on the Anglo-American context. This paper reflects in many ways a shift in her career to focus more on international connections and research.…”

“…In this piece she made a clear critique on the minor and selective roles assigned to women in geography (Monk, 1978). Her sensitivity to sexist situations and her dedication to promoting equality in the field of geography then led her to write 'On not excluding half of the human in human geography ' with Susan Hanson (1982) in which they clearly stated that research in human geography had avoided women, i.e. 'half of the human race'.…”

“…In the same year, Jan published the first review article on feminist geography, with Wilbur Zelinsky and Susan Hanson (1982), in which they also discussed indicators of the changing status of women geographers. While sensitive to diversity from 'outside', this piece also acknowledged Anglo-American centrality in the production of knowledge in feminist geography.…”