Cultural Geography

of gender and class interests, in the service of

which spaces are defined and redefined.

This analysis illustrates how accounts of subjec-

tivity associated with the theme of equality enable

us to think of gender as residing in environments

external to human subjects. However, we have also

shown how attempts to trace the sources of gender

inequalities in such environments founder, and

return instead to the power relations through which

(gendered) geographies are produced. Later in this

chapter we will argue for approaches to subjectiv-

ity that do not view subjects and environments as

separable in this way. However, at this point we

note how examination of the gendering of spaces

and places illuminates important aspects of the

persistence of gender inequalities and in so doing

provides resources with which to challenge deep-

seated or ‘sedimented’ assumptions about the

meaning and placing of gender categories.

While assessments of the impact of feminist

politics in particular contexts vary (Mitchell,

1984; Rowbotham, 1989; Scott, 1999), the opti-

mistic view that distinguishing between cultural

gender and biological sex would have a straight-

forward liberatory effect (via the notion of equal-

ity) has largely faded (Evans, 1994). In the late

twentieth and early twenty-first centuries few

feminists would claim that the cultural is intrin-

sically easier to change than the biological.

Indeed in some ways such a claim had always

been deeply ironic given that the sex–gender dis-

tinction had come from a psychiatrist who argued

that it was easier (and more emancipatory) to

intervene surgically than to change the gender

identifications of his patients (Shapiro, 1991).

Another strand of feminist politics has empha-

sized the need for separate spaces for women,

within which the resistances of gender are

acknowledged. We turn to this argument next,

elaborating its impact on cultural geography.

RECONFIGURING GENDER

Closely related to the theme of equality is that of

autonomy. Conceptually, autonomy underpins

liberal feminist arguments for equality because

the capacity for self-determination or self-rule is

seen as intrinsic to human nature, regardless of

gender. Moreover, Simone de Beauvoir’s inspir-

ing analysis drew strongly on the argument that

women are socially constructed as (men’s)

‘other’ and consequently denied autonomy.

Thus, women’s autonomy may be viewed as a

prerequisite for gender equality. But as we will

show, the politics of autonomy has not been

defined solely in terms of equality with men.

Whereas the logic of equality points towards

opportunities for, and treatment of, men and

women ‘regardless’ of gender, autonomy has

required the development of women-focused

practices, and the production or ‘performance’ of

differently sexed space (Rose, 1999). Since its

emergence in the mid 1970s, feminist geography

has been associated with efforts to practise geo-

graphy differently as well as to counteract and

correct omissions and biases in geographical

knowledges. In the academic discipline of geo-

graphy such practices are epitomized by the

emergence of groups and networks committed to

the development of feminist perspectives, such

as the Women and Geography Study Group (a

group within the Royal Geographical Society

and Institute of British Geographers), the

Geographic Perspectives on Women Specialty

Group (a group within the Association of

American Geographers) and Geogfem (an elec-

tronic discussion list for feminist geography).

None of these exclude men, not least because the

principles of equality operated by professional

organizations prohibit the use of gender as a cri-

terion for membership. However, they success-

fully create spaces in which women are generally

more ‘vocal’ than men and which are often

temporarily occupied only by women (Delph-

Januirek, 1999; McDowell, 1990; Nairn, 1997).

Attempts to create new kinds of spaces of and

for knowledge production have, however, often

proven problematic because of deep-seated ten-

sions between academic conventions and feminist

commitments (Bondi, 2002; Domosh, 2000;

Hanson, 2000; Nast and Pulido, 2000; Penrose

et al., 1992; Seager, 2000). Such tensions some-

times revolve around the cooperative, non-

hierarchical ways of working espoused by

feminists which sit uneasily within the highly

individualistic systems of reward and recognition

characteristic of university cultures. Such cultures

typically proclaim the high degree of autonomy

available to academics, but, as feminists have

shown, the form of autonomy espoused is implic-

itly and specifically gendered masculine

(Aisenberg and Harrington, 1988; Grosz, 1990;

Hekman, 1992; Lloyd, 1984; Morley and Walsh,

1996). Feminists have therefore argued and agi-

tated for the scope to redefine autonomy.

As well as underpinning the efforts of feminist

geographers to influence spaces and practices

within the academy, the theme of autonomy has

generated a body of work in cultural geography

concerned with parallel efforts in other settings.

Whereas a concern with equality has generated

research about the inscriptions of spaces as both

masculine and feminine, a concern with autonomy

has prompted a specific focus on women’s

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