Gender, Identity and Place: Understanding Feminist Geographies

How is gender linked to geography? Do men and women live different lives in different parts of the world? And if gendered attributes are socially constructed, then how do femininity and masculinity vary over time and space? These are some of the questions Linda McDowell explores in this accessible, wide-ranging, and thorough introduction to feminist perspectives on geography.

A highly regarded feminist geographer, McDowell takes readers through various approaches and arguments in the field, as well as different interpretations of key terms, such as feminism, sex, gender, and patriarchy. She examines the gendering of specific spaces and places ranging from the workplace to the nation state, and moves easily from theory to practice, in the form of case studies to illuminate topics as diverse as social constructionist ideas about the body (crucial to discussions of gendered identity) and the geographies of residence and wage labor in various locations around the globe.

What do geographers have to say about social relations between men and women, migration and travel, borders and boundaries, place and nonplace in a literal and metaphorical sense? As she considers these issues in depth, McDowell reveals how feminist geography helps explain the huge disruptions and transformations that have altered the connections between people and places in recent years.