Women, Gender and the Organisation of Space

Abstract

Geographers have never had much to say about women. A glance along the shelves of any library or bookshop, at lists of courses on offer in schools, colleges, polytechnics and universities, or at the contents lists of new books immediately reveals that only half the human race seems to be important: man and environment, man’s role in the developing world, the city as the home of man … A more charitable interpretation of this emphasis is that the term ‘man’ is used to include women. This may be so, but in itself it implies that gender differences are not significant, that it is unimportant for geography teachers and students to distinguish and differentiate between women’s and men’s beliefs, behaviour and activities in space. It is remarkable how ‘sexless’ geographical analysis is. In studies of retailing, migration, residential choice and journey-to-work patterns, for example, there has seldom been an explicit recognition of the gender of the individuals concerned, or any acknowledgement that women and men may have different interests and behaviour patterns. Differences are concealed beneath the general concern for establishing a spatial geometry and search for spatial patterns and regularities.