Cultural Geography

powerful gender inscriptions, men and women

put their masculine or feminine cultural creden-

tials in question through their mere presence in

those environments (Cresswell, 1996). The

extent to which it is considered unacceptable to

inhabit spaces culturally coded in terms of the

other(’s) gender is illustrated clearly by the neg-

ative connotations of the gendered adjectives

applied to such suspect subjects. Even when, or

where, gender conventions weaken, ‘transgres-

sions’ remain noteworthy, illustrated in terms

like ‘male nurse’ (distinguished from ‘nurse’) or

‘female pilot’ (distinguished from ‘pilot’): the

gender of terms without adjectival specification

can, apparently, be assumed.

Feminist theorists have sought to unearth the

roots of such placings of gender, in order to

ascertain on what grounds the gendered associa-

tions are made. Attempts have been made to

identify patterns that reveal why one environ-

ment, and the associated activities that colour its

conceptualization, is coded masculine, and

another feminine, and often the patterns (whether

‘found’ or ‘imposed’) are of a dualistic nature.

Many and various dualisms have been identified

and linked to cultural and geographical imagin-

ings of gender. For example, it has been argued

that environments are gendered according to

whether they are conceptualized as ‘public’ or

‘private’, with linkages to binaries of ‘culture’

and ‘nature’, ‘mind’ and ‘body’, ‘reason’ and

‘emotion’, ‘active’ and ‘passive’, which are all

structured hierarchically, the first terms of these

pairings not only inscribed as masculine but

privileged as well.

The literature of cultural geography provides

abundant empirical evidence of the operation of

such dichotomies. But the gender patterning of

space almost invariably turns out to be compli-

cated, disrupting as well as reproducing

gendered binaries. Natural environments, for

example, are often feminized and viewed as

passive, rendering them available for conquest

and control by radically separate masculine sub-

jects (Kolodny, 1975; Rose, 1993; Seager, 1993;

Women and Geography Study Group, 1997;

Woodward, 1998). Mountaineering is thus tradi-

tionally coded as ‘masculine’, and the places

associated with mountaineering – its peopled

environments – are similarly masculinized even

if the land itself is coded as feminine. The urge

to climb and to conquer mountains can thus be

understood in terms of a particular, heterosexual

version of masculinity (Rose, 1993). However,

mountaineering also cuts across associations

between masculinity and ‘rationality’, largely

driven, as mountaineers acknowledge, by

passions rather than logic, in addition to which

the muscular strength and fitness required entails

a fixation with the bodily which in other contexts

might be seen as ‘unmanly’ (Longhurst, 2000;

Morin et al., 2001). What this (stereotypical)

example illustrates is that the gendering of

spaces and places is rarely straightforward.

Dualisms, and the value of their constitutive

parts, shift depending on context, and they do not

themselves ‘explain’ or provide reliable analyti-

cal tools for understanding the projection of a

gender binary onto ‘natural’ and built environ-

ments. Indeed, what emerges most clearly from

the way the relationships between dualisms oper-

ate is that they serve to protect gender inequali-

ties by privileging all things male (Bondi, 1992;

1998a).

Another example reinforces the point: the

work of cooking, cleaning and caring in general

tends to be linked with women, especially when

unpaid and carried out in domestic spaces.

Where such activity takes place beyond the

domestic space of the home, it has the potential

to become managed, professionalized and

masculinized. The more men become involved in

a particular place, the more respected that place

becomes; and conversely, the more valued the

place becomes, the more likely it is to become a

‘male preserve’. Think of the chef’s kitchen, as

opposed to the housewife’s; the consultant

surgeon’s common room, as opposed to that of

the nurse. Any place where ‘men’s business’ is

conducted is likely to be esteemed as a space of

action and achievement, command and control

(Spain, 1992). In contrast, the more servile and

superficial business of ‘women’s space’ is likely

to be trivialized, denigrated and domesticated,

that is, excluded from the peculiarly defined

‘public’ sphere of influence and importance.

Kevin Hannam and Pamela Shurmer-Smith

recognize the pervasiveness and tenacity of such

gendered geographical divides, and suggest that

(predominantly male) geographers have been

complicit in strengthening this tautologous link

between women and the private sphere, through

the practice of

classifying the domestic realm as the place where

women and children are permitted and the public realm

as the place where they are wholly or partially

excluded. [Thus] in much of Africa we find the domes-

tic realm extending to the cultivated fields where

women work, but not necessarily to the front of

people’s houses where men talk. (1994: 109; compare

Monk and Hanson, 1982)

Bondi and Domosh (1998) further elaborate the

argument by showing how distinctions between

public and private, characteristic of modern urban

societies, can be understood in terms of a coalition

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