‘Upward-thrusting buildings ejaculating into the sky’ – do cities have to be so sexist?

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Leslie Kern is an associate professor of geography and environment/women's and gender studies and director of women’s and gender studies at Mount Allison University. She holds a PhD in women’s studies from York University. As an academic, Leslie writes about gender, gentrification, and feminism and teaches urban, social, and feminist geography. Her research has received a National Housing Studies Achievement Award and a Fulbright Scholar Award. Leslie currently lives in the territory of Mi’kmaqi in the town of Sackville, New Brunswick with her partner and their two senior cats. She runs an academic career coaching service and blog at LINK / and tweets about all things feminist, academic, and urban on Twitter @LellyK. Less

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What is feminist geography?

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The geography of women examines the effects geography has on gender inequality and is theoretically influenced by welfare geography and liberal feminism. Feminist geographers emphasize the various gendered constraints put in place by distance and spatial separation (for instance, spatial considerations can play a role in confining women to certain locations or social spheres). In their book Companion to Feminist Geography, Seager and Johnson argue that gender is only a narrow-minded approach to understanding the oppression of women throughout the decades of colonial history.[2] As such, understanding the geography of women requires a critical approach to questions of the dimensions of age, class, ethnicity, orientation and other socio-economic factors.[2] An early objection to the concept of geography of women, however, claimed that gender roles were mainly explained through gender inequality. However, Foord and Gregson argue that the idea of gender roles emerges from a static social theory that narrows the focus to women and portrays women as victims, which gives a narrow reading of distance. Instead, they claim that the concept of the geography of women is able to display how spatial constraint and separation enter into the construction of women's positions.[5] In 2004, theorist Edward Said critiqued the idea of geographical spaces in such a context where actions on gendered practices of representation are fabricated through dominant ideological beliefs.[6] In response, feminist geographers argue that misrepresentations of gender roles and taken-for-granted feminist movements reveal that the challenges of the colonial present lie within the confinement of women to limited spatial opportunities. Therefore, feminist geographies are built on the principle that gender should be applied and developed in terms of space.[7]

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She holds a PhD in women’s studies from York University. As an academic, Leslie writes about gender, gentrification, and feminism and teaches urban, social, and feminist geography

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