feminist versions of this tradition, what women
and men share by virtue of their common human-
ity is of much greater importance than the ways
in which they differ, and constitutes the basis for
a politics of equality, including, for example,
equal citizenship rights. Liberal humanism
advances an understanding of the adult human
subject as a coherent, integrated, bounded,
autonomous being capable of self-direction, self-
control and so on: liberal feminists from
Wollstonecraft onwards have argued that these
characteristics apply as much to women as to
men but that women have been prevented from
realizing their full potential by outmoded
assumptions expressed in limitations on their
opportunities for education, for economic inde-
pendence and so on.
Arguments for equality between men and
women have, of course, been enormously influ-
ential within cultural geography. Moreover,
while the particular understanding of the human
subject associated with liberal humanism has
been subject to criticism, the notion of equality
has not been relinquished. On the contrary, the
politics of equality remain of the utmost impor-
tance in the cultural world with which geo-
graphers engage, and within the practice of
cultural geography.
Two closely related features of the vision of
subjectivity invoked by the theme of equality
have been particularly productive for cultural
geography, namely the question of where gender
is understood to reside, and the way the relation-
ship between subject and environment is concep-
tualized. According to the liberal feminist
tradition, gender contributes nothing fundamen-
tal to human subjectivity. Instead it operates as a
kind of adornment, but one which is prone to be
regarded as more significant than it is (which is
why gender inequalities persist in many arenas
and settings, and why feminists continue to argue
for equality). Gender is thus understood as some-
thing external to the core of the human subject,
as something imposed on but not residing within
the essential nature of human being. At the same
time as ‘externalizing’ gender, this understand-
ing of subjectivity invokes a radical separation
between the subject and the environment in
which s/he exists: the human subject occupies a
position of self-determining, rational agent inde-
pendent of, and external to, that environment,
including both its social and its physical facets.
These two elements of the liberal humanist
model of human subjectivity have together
invited us to think about gender as belonging at
least as much to environments – the spaces and
places in which we live our lives – as to people.
Put another way it has helped us to thinkabout gender as inscribed on ‘natural’ and built
environments, as well as, and as a way of, marking
and adorning bodies. Cultural geography has
thus sought to reveal the variously gendered con-
stitution of a diverse array of environments,
including for example in workplaces (Hanson
and Pratt, 1995; Massey, 1995; McDowell, 1995;
1997), homes (Domosh, 1998; Dowling and
Pratt, 1993; Gregson and Lowe, 1995; Marston,
2000; Roberts, 1991), residential neighbour-
hoods (Bondi, 1998a; Hubbard, 1998; 2000),
retail spaces (Blomley, 1996; Domosh, 1996;
1998; Gregson and Crewe, 1998), leisure and
sports environments (Johnston, 1995; 1996;
McEwan et al., 2002; Morin et al., 2001) and
cyberspace (Wakeford, 1999). Each of these
places has become gendered in accordance with
the kind of activities that take place there, and
with the ways in which these activities have
traditionally been conceptualized and ‘marked’
as either masculine or feminine.
Several of the studies cited argue that gender
and sexuality are inextricably intertwined within
the various spaces on which they focus, and
refuse to be bound by the separation between sex
and gender associated with the emergence of
feminist perspectives in geography. This concep-
tualization of gender initially inhibited explicit
engagement with questions of sexuality, as well as
with embodiment, and has subsequently been
extensively critiqued within cultural geography
(Bell and Valentine, 1995; Binnie and Valentine,
1999; Bondi, 1998b; Domosh, 1999; Longhurst,
1995; 1997; Nast, 1998). We would argue, how-
ever, that the conceptual separation of subject and
environment invoked by the sex–gender distinc-
tion has survived such critiques and has been
highly productive in fostering research about the
geographical and cultural inscription of gendered
subjectivities understood in a wide variety of ways.
To elucidate this notion of the inscription of
gender on environment, we draw on some every-
day and supposedly ‘common-sense’ examples.
Think, for instance, of the stereotypical building
site, boxing ring and aeroplane cockpit, and the
starkly contrasting gender associations of secre-
tarial spaces (the traditional ‘typing pool’), the
aerobic fitness centre and the aeroplane aisle
(Grimshaw, 1999; Hochschild, 1983; Pringle,
1989). To be sure, such correlations are neither
rigid nor static, but the gendering of such places
is clearly illustrated by the way the gender iden-
tities of those who transgress the conventions are
viewed. Female boxers and brickies are likely to
attract comment as unwomanly or ‘mannish’,
while male flight attendants and secretaries are
often characterized as effeminate or effete.
Precisely because these various places bear such328 PLACING SUBJECTIVITIES3029-ch17.qxd 03-10-02 10:56 AM Page 328