Feminist geographies developed a critique not only of what geography looked, but also of the concepts used by the discipline to organize its knowledge in order to exclude what it was seen as women’s issues. This critique has surely been the most challenging and exciting development in geography in the past 30 years. The insistence that women matter has led to a radical re-working of how geographers can think of social life. Feminist geographers have fragmented the old categories of geography and added new concerns through complex empirical work, addressing it to social, cultural, economic and political issues. They have also accused male geographers, of looking at the world from a non problematic position, making no connection between the world as it was seen and the position of the viewer, and the truth of what they saw it, was established by that claim to objectivity.
The intersection and mutual influences of geography and gender are evident and deep. If on the one hand geography has been influenced by culture formation of particular genders and genders relations, on the other hand gender has been influenced by the production of geographies.
Gender is a social construction, which reflects some aspects of biological difference (e.g. as mentioned in the introduction, men and women are treated differently in harmony to their sex, and that is reflected on their most basic actions, such as, the play with different toys, the way they dress. In other words society expect men and women to act in accord to their sex). So feminists have argued that the notion of reason as it developed from the 17th century onwards, is not gender neutral.
Thus feminist geographers have began to study issues related to gender, that have not been studied by men, such as, looking at women in the urban spatial structure, women’s employment, women’s access to facilities, women and development. These are focused on the aspects of women’s lives (e.g. marriage, motherhood, work, resources, welfare, authority and body politics). Looking at this point we can say that, feminist geographies are based on women’s lives as mentioned above but also their experiences.
We can evidence that the place occupied by women within the society is not the same that it used to be 30/40 years ago. From 1960s/70s with the emancipation of women they have started to perform different functions and actions within the society, even the lifestyles have changed. Nowadays women can be as independent as men (not in whole world, but in the most developed countries), and that was a cultural and social chock by the time of the 1970s. However nowadays it is more than a reality. This means that gender is the primary social relation on which experiences are based and identities are constructed. For feminist geographers all the other aspects that help us to build a profile or determine an identity, is derived or is a consequence of gender. Feminist geographers have questioned the dichotomy space and time, constructed by ideas about how people and space and places interact with each other, and how it is related to gender.
Many feminist geographers have explored the spatiality of capitalism patriarchy, and they have argued that the social relations of capitalist patriarchy consisted of the relations of production (waged work) and reproduction (unwaged, domestic work). To these social relations (e.g. men are expected to undertake waged and women are expected to undertake unwaged), feminist geographers called patriarchy genders. However, as a consequence of the Industrial Revolution, capitalism was reorganised into factory-based production and home became as a mere space of reproduction. Given these economic and social changes, the process of development within the city, spaces have also begun to be gendered. By this we understand the spaces where industries (or places of work) were not located, also denominated or gendered as feminine.
The idea based on this feminist analysis, about spatiality of social relations means that spaces are both made materially and are maintained or supported beyond the idea of a predefined behaviour and values. Thus feminist geographers have continued to critique the gendering of the opposite categories used to create space and places, determinate as boundaries, defining a type of people linked to certain practices (in bounds), while others are (out of bounds). However concerned to consider the way which gender roles and relations can be part of a complex dynamics of gendered spatiality. By this I mean that from a different world to another one (developed countries vs. third world), different cultures, different societies, different realities, are at the end the reflex of different gender inequalities existent around the globe (e.g. women in South America have different lifestyles from the European women, derived to the different inequalities/realities lived in these two different places).
Thus we can say that the whole idea of social and cultural has changed since that period of time. So it is not a surprise that the interests of social and cultural geographers have converged in recent years, because the necessity of re-study the social contrasting with the traditionalists’ cultures, questioning what is the right women’s place? Is it to stay at home taking care of children and cooking? The response is more than obvious, “No”; women have instead occupied, have been representing an active function, having a social and cultural life. Recognizing these changes in spatial organization of social relations, we must also re-think the unity of space and place in different terms to analyse this changed state of the world. The impact of an increase in women’s participation is reflected on the system of gender relations, and as I have said, this varies a lot between from a place to another. Their participation in waged labour force has highly differentiated functionally and socially, and consequently so has changed the cultural patterns of behaviour. Thus the constant process of changing is itself an important determinant of social and cultural response.
Social relations have distinct meanings and interpretations when combined into different articulations. Thus in different regions of gender relations with other socio-cultural relations made the meaning of the gender issue itself has changed form, and any assumptions of easy alliances among women in different places was consecutively unacceptable. The limitations of women’s mobility, in terms of identity and space, has been in some cultural contexts a crucial means of subordination to men.
One of the most evident aspects of this control of spatiality and identity has been in the West related to the culturally specific distinction of the sectors: private and public. The attempt to confine women to the domestic space was an attempt of spatial control and consecutively social and identity control. This confirms the extremely importance of the spatial separation of home and work place in generating the fact of women becoming economically active.
Conclusion
There is no doubt that cultural and social are inseparable. By other words we can say that there is no culture without society (social space/place where culture is practiced and reflected in every action in our every days’ lives), neither exists society without culture/cultures. They are totally inter-related to each other. And gender is one of the multiple issues or factors able to proof it. As it was analysed in the essay, women becoming socially active (they were before, but in a different way (e.g. childcare)) in what is respected to political and economical fields, passing to demonstrate what had been passed unnoticed for many long years: they cultural contribution to society, which reports they way they think and see the world.
Obviously this was not a pacific neither an acceptable process by all the powerful political, social groups/ lobbies, led by men by the time of 1970s. Because it would have been more convenient to them that women had stayed at home taking care of children and cooking, so they could rule the world in accord to their cultural, social and political ideals and convictions and judgements. And at this point is important to remember that those were strongly criticised by women.
This social and cultural turn has obligated to a re-thinking of the new reality and re-studies and analyse the social groups and spaces and new cultural meanings, such as the new concept of family, and patterns of social behaviour.
This explains why the interests of social geographers and cultural geographers have converged in recent years, as social and culture cannot be studied or analysed without an understanding of each other.
