Who Makes Geographical Knowledge? The Gender of Geography’s Gatekeepers

Abstract

Building on the insight that all knowledge is situated and embodied, we analyze the gender of gatekeepers in the production of geographical knowledge in the current Anglophone publication landscape. Our results show that the share of women gatekeepers throughout the three selected sites—handbooks, progress reports, as well as editors and editorial boards of twenty-two geography journals—is consistently between 36 and 42 percent. These averages, however, disguise widely varying figures between different handbooks and journals. Comparing data for journal editors and editorial boards between 1999 and 2017, we find considerable growth in the presence of women. We also show that a higher share of female editors is associated with a higher share of women in editorial boards and in commissioned contributions. Editors and journals therefore need to put gender equity (but also racial and language equality) among the board and among contributors squarely on the agenda to create more space for new theoretical approaches, issues, and methodologies that center the lives and experiences of those living in spaces outside of the white Anglosphere—in the Global South and the Global East but also in the Global North.