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| THE MAN-LAND RELATIONSHIP FROM THE GENDER PERSPECTIVE: A SUMMARY AND ANALYSIS OF FEMINIST GEOGRAPHIC RESEARCH ABROAD |
| ZHOU Pei-qin |
| School of Social & Behavioral Sciences, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210023, China |
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Abstract Geography, including human geography, had been a field dominated by traditional gender ideology, which gave little scholarly attention to women's issues, for a very long time. In the 1960s, under the strong influence of the second feminist movement, feminism and human geography started to integrate, and feminist geography, a new subfield of human geography, was lunched in the western society. Simply speaking, the primary aim of feminist geography is to expose and help eliminate gender inequalities with regard to man-land relationships. This essay systematically and critically reviews the overseas development of feminist geography in the past few decades, and highlights the necessity and importance of developing this subfield of human geography in China. Firstly, the essay lays out the academic origins of feminist geography. It is pointed out that feminism, radical geography and cultural turn are three major factors that have significantly shaped the landscape of feminist geography. Specifically speaking, it is feminists who highlight the necessity to address issues that cause gender discriminations experienced by most women in their everyday life,radical geographers show the importance and possibility of which academia can make a difference to solve social issues, and the cultural turn illuminates that everyday life shouldn't be taken for granted but should be subjected to careful examination. Secondly, the major research areas and findings in feminist geography are summarized and analyzed. The essay points out that most feminist geographic research focuses on private home, public spaces and homosexual communities. In total, existing literature has been successful in revealing that our place and space is not gender neutral at all. On the contrary, the living environment is built under the guidelines which embody traditional gender ideology, no matter it is private home or public place. Thirdly, the last section of the essay argues that it is crucially important and thought-provoking to develop feminist geography in China.
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Received: 30 April 2013
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2014, Vol. 29 
