INTERNATIONAL GEOGRAPHICAL UNION COMMISSION
ON GENDER AND GEOGRAPHY
Newsletter No. 54 May, 2015
From the Commission Chair
This newsletter brings much exciting news about feminist geographers and feminist geography activities from all around the world. In particular, I want to highlight the April 2015 conference on “Gendered Rights to the City” which our Commission was proud to have co-sponsored with the GeographicPerspectives on Women Specialty (GPOW) Group of the Association of American Geographers (AAG). I would like to reiterate my thanks and congratulations to the organising team for an outstanding job! The event also acted as our Commission’s pre-conference to the main 2015 IGU Conference coming up in Moscow (17th-22nd August).The Gender and Geography Commission will be organising six sessions in Moscow:
- Factors Affecting Women’s Education: Gender, Space, Culture and Society
- Gender and climate change: Mitigation and Adaptation strategies”
- Gendered Crime and Spaces: An approach in Feminist Geography
- Gendered Life-Courses
- Gender Activisms in Asia: Peoples, Places and Politics (jointly with the Political Geography Commission)
- Geographies of International Student Mobility: The Roles of Gender, Class and Ethnicity (jointly with the Population Geography Commission)
Also, as part of winning the award for being the best IGU Commission for 2014, our Commission has been invited to present a keynote lecture at the Moscow meeting. While I will be presenting the paper entitled “A Continuing Agenda for Gender” on behalf of the Commission, it is being written collaboratively with Janet Momsen, Janice Monk, Maria Dolors Garcia Ramon and Joos Droogleever Fortuijn. The paper will discuss the challengesfaced by andcontributionsof the Commission in its 27-year history, and consider some of the emergingdirectionsandchallenges ahead for a continuing agenda for gender in geography. Please do support the lecture if you are planning to be in Moscow and all the best for the coming months.
Shirlena Huang
National University of Singapore
GENDERED RIGHTS TO THE CITY: INTERSECTIONS OF IDENTITY AND POWER
On April 19-20, 2015, the IGU Commission on Gender and Geography co-sponsored an outstanding conference with the Geographic Perspectives on Women Specialty (GPOW) Group of the Association of American Geographers (AAG). Organized as a pre-cursor to the AAG Annual Meeting held later that week in Chicago, the conference was hosted and co-organized by the Department of Geography, University of Wisconsin Milwaukee under the excellent local leadership of Anne Bonds, Anna ManssonMcGinty, Kristin Sziarto, Rebecca Wolfe, and Hyejin Yoon with IGU Gender Commission support from Holly Hapke, Ann Oberhauser, and Jan Monk and from GPOW by Nicole Laliberte and Laura Shillington and a team of seven graduate student volunteers.Over 130 people participated, from at 15 least countries in northern, western and central Europe,Israel,Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, the USA and Canada.
In all, there were 23 sessions, 63 papers, 3 panels and 2 workshops. The opening panel brought together representatives of community women’s organizations who addressed the challenges they face and their strategies for addressing them -- Martha de la Rosa, Director of the Wisconsin Chapter of 9to5, which advocates for women’s rights in the workplace, JananNajeeb of the Milwaukee Muslim Women’s Coalition. Gender Commission Chair, Shirlena Huang, National University of Singaporetook up research on how the state controls rights and freedom of movement and in space of immigrants in the city, and Linda Peake (York University, Canada) addressed challenges and approaches in academic/community collaboration drawing on her sustained connections in Guyana and beyond.
The range of papers offered was wide – encompassing aspects of safety and threat, racism. activism, intersectionality of gender with, for example, sexuality, migrant status, and race. Diverse research methodologies were explored, including visual and digital, taking account of emotions, and of feminist pedagogies, as well as the challenges being faced by early career academics in contemporary neoliberal universities. An excellent field trip revealed historical expressions of the ethnicity, immigration, race and class expressions in the political landscape of Milwaukee.
We appreciate the collegiality and sustained work of the organizers, of the many departments in the university that contributed support to the conference, and also of the facilities and cooperation of staff of the American Geographical Society Library, not only for hosting multiple sessions in its impressive space but for organizing the multifaceted exhibit “Borders Drawn and Crossed: Women Cartographers/Geographers/Explorers.”
Opening Session: (left to right) Linda Peake, JananNaeeb, Marha de la Ross, Shirlena Huang.
Panel Discussion: “Feminist Methods and the City: Creating and Shaping Urban Knowledges.”
Lots to talk and think about
NEWS FROMAROUND THE WORLD
On April 14-17, the CongresoInternacionalsobreGėnero y Espaciowas held at Universidad Nacional de Mexico (UNAM) sponsored by the Instituto de Geografía and the ProgramaUniversitario de Estudios de Genero. With 89 papers and 15 parallel sessions, this event represents a landmark in highlighting Spanish-language research gender studies in geography and related fields. It brought together researchers, including graduate students, from an array of Latin American countries, especially Mexico, as well as others from several European countries and the United States. Topics were wide-ranging including theoretical and empirical studies covering topics such as identities, race, sexualities, representation, exclusion, resistance, and emotions. Keynote speakers were architect Olga Segovia (Chile), anthropologist Teresa del Valle (Spain) and geographer Maria Dolors Garcia Ramon (Spain). The goal of organizing an ongoing series every two years is envisioned.
Gender themes were well represented at the Annual Meeting of the Association of American Geographers held in Chicago in April with 65 sessions listed as sponsored or co-sponsored by the Geographic Perspectives on Women Specialty Group and more than 20 by the Sexuality and Space Specialty Group. Many sessions were co-sponsored with other groups such as Social and Cultural Geography, Economic Geography, and Cultural Geography. The complete program, including the index by group and topic may be accessed at
Congratulations to the feminist geographers who received awards at that meeting: Susan Hanson(Clark University) was honored with the Stan Brunn Creativity Award recognizing herinstrumental role in introducing feminist theories and gendered analysis to geography, thus creating new modes of interpreting and explaining our everyday worlds. The Jan Monk Service Award honored Linda Peake(York University, Canada). Students recognized included Aparna Parikh (Pennsylvania State University) withthe Susan Hanson Dissertation Proposal Award for her research on nightscapes of call center workers in Manila and Mumbai; Ana Grahovac (University Of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) received the Glenda Laws MA Paper Award for “Geographies Of Abortion Access In the US” and the undergraduate award went to Christine Alic, of Brock University, for her paper “Contested Landscapes of the Female Gaze: Self –Portraits as Resistance to Gender Oppression. ” In the Sexuality and Space Specialty Group first prize in the graduate student paper competition was earned by KiranBhairannavar (National University of Singapore) for hiscontribution “Exploring the 'more-than-closet' geographies of sex and sexuality: A study of Delhi's queer men;”Carly Nichols (University of Arizona) was awarded a prize by the Asia Specialty group for her paper on the negative consequences of government agricultural programs for health in the Uttarakand region (India). Emma GallaasMullaney(Pennsylvania State University) also recently received three awards for her work on gender-power relations as an aspect of historical and contemporary aspects of agricultural change in Mexico (see below, chapter and articles listing,) Two of these are from AAG Specialty Groups (Political Geographyand Cultural and Political Ecology) and the Miller Award for PhD students from her department.
Congratulations to KuntalaLahiri-Dutt (Australian National University (ANU) who was honored as a Champion of Gender Equity in ANU, by the university’s Gender Institute.
RESEARCH PROJECTS
The collaborative project “Visible parenting in the workplace: implications, costs and strategies”, being conducted by N. Klocker, D. Drozdzewski, M. Flood, S Hamylton, J.Atchinson, and J. Croft has been funded from University of Wollongong Global Challenges Strategic Funding: 2015. Project details can be found at
KuntalaLahiri-Dutt, (Australian National University) is Chief Investigator of the Australian Research Council Discovery Project ‘Farmers of the Future: the Challenges of Feminised Agriculture in India’ (with co-investigators Dr Bill Pritchard, Professor Stewart Lockie, Dr Patrick Kilby and Professor Amita Shah). The project is co-funded by the Indian Council of Social Science Research jointly with Professor Amita Shah and Dr ItishreePattnaik (Gujarat Institute of Development Research, Ahmedabad, India).
Emma GallaasMullaney(Pennsylvania State University) has been named a GEO fellow and is serving as lead author authorUnited Nations Environmental Programme, Regional Assessment for Latin America and the Caribbean for the sixth Global Environment Outlook report (GEO-6), Panama City, Panama.
NEW BOOKS
Buechler, Stephanie and Anne-Maria Hanson (eds). 2015. A Political Ecology of Women, Water, and Global Environmental Change. London: Routledge.
Chant, Sylvia and Gwendolyn Beetham, (eds) (2015) Gender, Poverty and Development (London: Routledge) (4 Volumes – Vol 1: Key Approaches and Concepts, Vol 2: Gender and Poverty in the Domestic Domain; Vol 3: Gendered Poverties in Relation to Health, Labour Markets and Assets; Vol 4: Gender, Poverty and Policy Interventions)
Coles, Anne. Leslie Gray, and Janet Momsen (eds)2015.The Routledge Handbook of Gender and Development. London and New York: Routledge..
Ferreira, Eduarda, Isabel Ventura, Luisa Rego, Manuela Tavares, Maria Antónia.Pires de Almeida, (Eds.) 2015). Percursos Feministas: Desafiar os Tempos. Lisboa: UMAR / Universidade Feminista.
Garcia-Ramon, Maria Dolors, Anna Ortiz Guitart, and Maria Prats Ferret. (2014). Espacios Públicos, Género, y Diversidad: Geografias para unas ciudades inclusivas.Barcelona: Icaria Editorial.
Harcourt, W. and I.L. Nelson (eds.) 2015.Practicing Feminist Political Ecologies: Moving Beyond the ‘Green Economy.’ London: Zed Books ( Several chapters are written by geographers including Leila Harris, Andrea Nightingale, and Dianne Rocheleau. Full listing of chapters can be found at
Lund, Ragnhild, Phillippe Doneys and Bernadette Resurrección (eds). 2015. Gendered Entanglements: Revisiting Gender in Rapidly Changing Asia. NiAS Press. Denmark.
Seager, Joni. (2014). Carson's Silent Spring. London: Bloomsbury.
Silva, Maria das GraçasNascimento Silva, Nasciemento Silva, Joseli Maria (Org.). Interseccionalidades, Gênero e sexualidades na Análise Espacial. Ponta Grossa, Toda Palavra.
Stratford, E. 2015. Geographies. Mobilities and Rhythms over the Life Course: Adventures in the Interval. London: Routledge and New York.
RECENT ARTICLES AND BOOK CHAPTERS
Alfasi, Nurit and ToviFenster. 2014 " Between socio-spatial and urban justice: Rawls' principles of justice in the 2011 Israeli Protest Movement". Planning Theory 13 (4): 407-427
Almeida, João Paulo, Leandro de Ornat, Marcio Jose. 2014. Espacialidade e masculinidadenavivência de jovens da escola de 'guardasmirins' empontagrossa, paraná”. Geo UERJ (2007), 2 142-171.
Ansell, Nicola, Seroala Tsoeu and Flora Hadja. 2015. “Women’s changing domestic responsibilities in neoliberal Africa: A relational time-space analysis of Lesotho’s garment industry.” Gender, Place and Culture 22 (3) 363-82.
Bagheri, Nazgol. 2015. “What qualitative GIS maps tell and don’t tell: Insights from mapping women in Tehran’s public spaces.”Journal of Cultural Geography 31(4): 166-78.
Bain, Alison L., William Payne and Jaclyn Isen. 2015. “Rendering a neighborhood queer.”Soclal and Cultural Geography 16(4): 424-43.
Baylina, Mireia, Maria Dolors Garcia Ramon et al. 2015. “O mundo rural em Espanha: uma perspectiva das mulheres profissionais.” Revista Latino-American de Geografia e Género6(2):: 24-37.
Benedicto, Bobby. 2015. “ The queer afterlife of the postcolonial city: (Trans)gender performance and the war of beautification.” Antipode 47(3): 580-97.
Blazek, Matej, Fiona M. Smith, MiroslavaLemesova, and Petro Hriková. 2015. “Ethics of care across professional and everyday positionalities: The (un)expected impacts of participatory video with young female carers in Slovakia.” Geoforum 61:45-55.
Blidon, Marianne. 2014. “Les sens du je. Réflexivité et objectivation des rapports sociaux.” Géographie & cultures 89-90:111-129.
-----. 2015. “L’AAG pour les nuls.”European Journal of Geography (cybergeo.revues.org/26977
Boterman, William R. and Gary Bridge. 2015. ”Gender, class and space in the field of parenthood: compating middle-class fractions in Amsterdam.” Transactions of the Institute of Britsh Geographers 40(2): 249-61.
Brickell, Katherine 2014, “’The whole world is watching’: Intimate geopolitics of forced eviction and women’s activism in Cambodia.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 104(6): 1256-72.
----. “Participatory video drama research in transitional Vietnam: post-production narratives on marriage, parenting and social evils.” Gender, Place and Culture 22(4): 510-25.
Cabral, Vinicius; Ornat, Marcio Jose; Silva, Joseli Maria. 2014. “As Relações Entre Espaço, Violência e a VivênciaTravestinaCidade de Ponta Grossa - Paraná – Brasil”. CadernoPrudentino de Geografia, 3: 118-135.
Carneiro, Marcia Tobias and Marcio Jose Ornat. 2014. “Espaço, atendimento de saúde e sexualidadessegundo a vivênciatravestiem Ponta Grossa – paraná”. Terr@ Plural (UEPG. Impresso), 8:203-223.
Caretta, M. A., G.Y. Cadena Montero, L. Sulbarán, and R. Sandoval, R. (2015). “¿La revolución tiene cara de campesina?" Un caso de estudio de la participación activa de las mujeres en el riego del páramo venezolano.” Revista Latino Americana de Genero y Geografia, 6 (2): 3- 23. DOI: 10.5212/Rlagg.v.6.i2.0001
Caretta, M. A. et al. 2015. Labour, climate perceptions and soils in the irrigations systems in Sibou, Kenya & Engaruka, Tanzania. Popular scientific publication from the dept of Human Geography in English, Swahili and Marakwet. ISBN: 978-91-87355-15-8 (English); 978-91-87355-17-2 (Kiswahili); 978-91-87355-16-5 (Marakwet)
Chant, Sylvia (2014) ‘Exploring the “Feminisation of Poverty” in Relation to Women’s Work and Home-based Enterprise in Slums in the Global South.’ International Journal of Gender and Entrepreneurship, 6:3, 296-316.
----. “Gender and Poverty in the Global South’, in Anne Coles, Leslie Gray and Janet Momsen (eds).A Handbook of Gender and Development (London: Routledge), 191-203.
----. “‘The “Feminisation of Poverty”: A Reflection 20 Years After Beijing’, UNRISD Think Piece ‘Let’s Talk About Women’s Rights 20 Years After the Beijing Platform for Action’ (Geneva: UNRISD) (
----. (2015) “Gambian Diaspora: Signs of Separation and Symbiosis”, Africa at LSE Newsletter, blog post(
Cezar, Tamires Regina Aguiar de Oliveira, Pinto, A M Vagner 2015. “A produção intelectual da Geografia Brasileira em torno das temáticas de Gênero e Sexualidades. Revista Latino-americana de Geografia e Gênero, 6(2):119 – 132.
Connell, J. and M. Walton-Roberts, M. 2015 "What about the Workforce? The Missing Geographies of Health Care." Progress in Human Geography. doi:10.1177/0309132515570513.
Cook, Ian R. 2015. “A vengeful education? Urban revanchism, sex work and the penal politics of John School.”GeografiskaAnnaler 97(1): 17-30.
Das, Tulshi Kumar, Alam, Falrul, Md.,Bhattacharyya, Rituparna and Parvin, Amina (2015). “Causes and contexts of domestic violence: Tales of help-seeking married women in Sylhet, Bangladesh, Asian Social Work and Policy Review, 9, 1–14, doi:10.1111/aswp.12055
De Jong, Anna. 2015, “Dykes on bikes: Mobility, belonging, and the visceral.” Australian Geographer 46(1):1-13.
Del Casino, Vincent and Catherine F. Brooks. 2015.”Talking about bodies online: Viagra, YouTube, and the politics of public(ized) sexualities” Gender Place and Culture 22(4): 474-93.
Domosh, Mona. 2015. “Commentary on ‘The lives of others: Body work, the production of difference and labor.” Economic Geography 91(1): 25-28.
Drozdzewski, D., (2015) “Retrospective reflexivity: The residual and subliminal repercussions of researching war.” Emotions, Space and Society, Special Issue on Researcher Trauma, doi:10.1016/j.emospa.2015.03.004, (Available online 24 April 2015).
Drozdzewski, D, and D.F. Robinson (2015) “Care-work on fieldwork: taking your own children into the field.” Children’s Geographies 13(3): 372-78.
England, Kim. 2015. “Nurses across borders: Global migration of registered nurses to the US.” Gender Place and Culture 22 (1)) 143-56.
Evans, Alice. 2015. “History lesson for gender equality from the Zambian copper belt.” Gender Place and Culture 22 (3): 344-62.,
Faria, Caroline and SharleneMollett. 2014 "Critical feminist reflexivity and the politics of whiteness in the field" Gender, Place and Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography [available on ifirst]
Faria, Caroline. 2014. "'I want my children to know Sudan' Narrating the long-distance intimacies of diasporic politics" Annals of the Association of American Geographers 104(5): 1052-67.
Fenster, Tovi and Chen Misgav 2014."Memory and place in Participatory Planning."Planning Theory and Practice, 15 (3): 349-369
Fenster, Tovi . 2015. "Do Palestinians live across the road? Address and the micro-politics of home in Israeli contested urban spaces". Environment and Planning A 46:2435-2451
Fisher, Karen T. 2015. “Positionality, subjectivity, and race in transnational and transcultural geographical research.” Gender, Place and Culture 22 (3): 456-73.
Giese, Kirsten and Alena Thiel. 2015. “ Chinese factor in the space, place and agency of female head porters in urban Ghana.” Social and Cultural Geography 16(4): 444-64.
Glynn, Kevin and Julie Cupples. 2015. “Negotiating and queering US hegemonies in TV drama: Populat geopolitics and cultural studies.” Gender, Place and Culture 22 (2): 271-87.
Gomes, Fernando Bertani. 2014. “TrajetóriasEspaciais de Jovens do SexoMasculino e os Agenciamentos da MortenaCidade de Ponta Grossa – Pr”. Revista Latino-americana de Geografia e Gênero, Ponta Grossa, 5(2): 99 – 113.
Gomes, Fernando Bertani, and Joseli Maria. Silva. 2014. “'CenasLoucas'. Asassemblages da violência de jovens do sexomasculinocomenvolvimentocomasdrogasnacidade de Ponta Grossa – PR”. Revista Latino-americana de Geografia e Gênero, 5 (1): 3-24.
Gorman-Murray, Andrew. 2015. “Twentysomethings and tweenagers: Subjectivities, spaces and young men at home. Gender, Place and Culture 22 (3): 422-39.
Greenough, Beth, Bronwyn Parry, Isabel Dyck, and Tim Brown. 2015. “Introduction: The gendered geographies of ‘bodies across border.’” .Gender, Place and Culture 22 (1): 83-89.
Gutierrez, Caitlin O’Neill and Peter Hopkins. 2015. “Introduction: Young people, gender and intersectionality.” Gender, Place and Culture 22 (3): 383-89.
Haugen, Marit S., BeritBrandth, and GroFollo. 2015. “Farm, family and myself: Farm women dealing with family break-up.” Gender,Place and Culture 22(1): 37-49.
Hopkins, Peter. 2014. “Managing Strangerhood: Young Sikh men’s strategies.” Environment and Planning A7:1572-85.