Geographies of Gender

Question 1

Iris Young (1990b)

Answer 1

has argued that masculine and feminine modes of bodily comportment reflect the fact that boys are freer to simply be in space as subjects rather than objects of visual inspection. Boys then tend to see themselves as ‘creating’ space and spatial relationships rather than being positioned in space.

Question 2

Matthew’s (1987)

Answer 2

It was documented in Britain in the late 1970s that, from age eight, middle class, parents tend to allow boys to explore more independently much greater distances from home

Question 3

Gilligan Rose (1993)

Answer 3

has argued that Human Geography is masculine in a more general epistemological sense..She argues masculinity and femininity are not simply social constructions but a self-reinforcing binary constructed within a masculinist frame of reference.

Question 4

Gilligan Rose quote

Answer 4

‘we won’t play nature to your culture’. This is a refusal to participate in the dualisms that structure masculine knowledges.

Question 5

Rejecting masculinist dualisms (1)

Answer 5

One strategy has been to rethink the concept of scientific objectivity

Question 6

Rejecting masculinist dualisms (2)

Answer 6

situating scientific claims opens space for other types of knowledge, constructed from different vantage points, using other technologies for seeing. These might include indigenous or community-based knowledges, or simply different research methodologies. One of the most exciting contributions of feminist geographers has been their enthusiasm for methodological experimentation with, for instance ethnography or participatory research (Moss, 2002)

Question 7

Rejecting masculinist dualisms (3)

Answer 7

the significance of specifying scientific claims and proliferating other ways of seeing is to generate conversation across partial knowledges so that we might develop less singular, less dangerous, more complex, multidimensional and reliable understandings of the world.
Situated knowledges open opportunities to learn from other perspectives and ways of knowing, and to engage in processes of translation across non-reducible knowledges.

Question 8

Rejecting masculinist dualisms (4)

Answer 8

question the classification of social life into public and private spheres, and explore linkages across different ‘spheres’ of life and scales of analysis.