Gender and Geography: Understanding the Intersections and Overlaps with Special Reference to India
摘要
Ever since the critical turn in geographyGeography in the 1970s, the geographers began reconceptualizing the key geographical concepts of spaceSpace, place and scale by applying feminist and other social science theories. These initial enquiries began by uncovering the female geographers within the academia in the early 1970s and gradually progressed through newer reflections on urban spaceUrban space, work, developmentDevelopment, mobilities, political ecologies, mobilities to more recent articulations around sexualitiesSexuality, emotion-affect, geographiesGeography of difference and so forth. However, while this ever-expanding spectrum of feminist contributions marked the developmentDevelopment of geographyGeography in the Anglophone; the Indian geographers continued to struggle to grapple with the intersections and overlaps between feminismFeminism and geographyGeography. That said, the objectives of this paper are as follows: (1) to trace the interconnections between geographyGeography and feminismFeminism and how feminist geographyFeminist geography underscores different epistemological and methodological traditions; (2) to map the journey of the evolution of feminist geographiesFeminist geography with special reference to India; and (3) to present the emerging research themes in the sub-discipline particularly in India. The paper would be based on an extensive review of research carried out within the geographyGeography of genderGender. The purpose, however, is not to bring out an exhaustive repertoire of research topics, rather to understand how this sub-discipline has evolved both epistemologically and methodologically.