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From Migration der Frau aus Berggebieten1 to Gender and Sustainable Development : Dynamics in the field of gender and geography in Switzerland and in the German-speaking context

Von Migration der Frau aus Berggebieten zu Geschlecht und nachhaltige Entwicklung : Veränderungen in dem Gebiet Geschlecht und Geographie in der Schweiz und im deutschsprachigen Kontext
Elisabeth Buehler and Karin Baechli
p. 275-300

Abstracts

In the first part of this paper we present the results of a bibliographic analysis of German-speaking academic theses and of journal articles explicitly discussing issues on gender and geography. The second part focuses on people, networks and institutions in the German-speaking context. For those familiar with gender research it is hardly surprising that women authors are almost exclusively the producers of this knowledge. Defensive conservatism against this innovative field of research seems to be stronger in Germany than in Austria and Switzerland. We identify a shift in the theoretical perspectives away from the originally dominating women studies towards gender studies perspectives in the publications analyzed, while men or masculinity studies are still missing. Two diverse interpretations must be taken into account for the significant recent decrease of the numbers of theses and articles. On the one hand we have to note a decrease in students’ interest in taking courses on gender. On the other hand the decline of publications explicitly focusing on gender is caused by a trend to mainstream gender into a broader discussion of social difference and identity.

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  • 1 English translation: Migration of the Woman (singular) from Mountain Areas.
  • 2 The nation-state Switzerland is divided officially in four linguistic territories. Approximately tw (...)

1Migration der Frau aus Berggebieten (Migration of THE woman (singular) from mountain areas) and Gender and Sustainable Development: these are the titles of two geographic texts. One was published in 1978, the other in 2004. The first is a master’s thesis written by Eva Buff at the Department of Geography at the University of Zurich (Buff, 1978). It is considered to be the first contribution in German-speaking geography with an explicit focus on women (Baeschlin, 2002). The second is an online report written in English – originally – in the framework of the National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR) North-South with the Department of Geography in Berne as the so-called “leading house” (Premchander & Mueller 2004). In the 26 years between Eva Buff’s master’s thesis and the compilation of the NCCR North-South report a large pool of knowledge has been generated in the field of geographic research on gender in Switzerland as well as in the two other German speaking countries Germany and Austria2.

2We have chosen these two titles because they exemplify some of the dynamic changes that occurred in the field of geographic gender studies during these 26 years. One of these changes is the growing importance of the English language that has accompanied scientific globalisation. In the 70s and 80s only a few publications were originally written in English even though English literature has always been an important source of knowledge. Another change visible in these two titles is the shift in the theoretical perspectives on gender. While in the 70s and early 80s it was very common to speak of woman in the singular, feminist research soon made very clear that there is no such thing as “THE woman”. During the 80s and 90s this essentialist notion was replaced by more complex notions of identity and by postmodernist concepts of subjectivity. As a consequence gender, and not sex, became the leading category in the field, removing women from nature and placing them within culture as constructed and self-constituting social subjects (Pratt, 1994). German-speaking geography is without any doubt participating in these dynamic progresses in the international and interdisciplinary epistemological discourse.

  • 3 At the time this paper was written (during the year 2005) "Gender and Sustainable Development" (Pre (...)

3The two publications noted in our title also stand for aspects of persistence in German-speaking geography on gender. One master’s thesis and one online report3 and not, for instance, a well-known textbook or a printed publication: with few exceptions, which we will mention in this paper, German-speaking geographic gender studies do not yet show great institutional success. It seems that most of the established exponents of the discipline are more resistant to integrating gender studies in curricula and research programmes than in some other countries such as the UK or the USA (Fleischmann & Meyer-Hanschen, 2005; Kramer, 2003).

  • 4 However, we would like to mention here that there is a group of feminist geographers in the German- (...)

4We will trace some of the progress and discuss some of the persistencies in the field of geography and gender that characterise the German-speaking context during the last three decades. The paper consists of two parts. In the first and more extensive we will present the results of a bibliographic analysis of academic theses and of journal articles that we have carried out. The second, shorter part of the paper focuses on people, networks and institutions in the field of gender and geography in the German-speaking context with a special emphasis on Switzerland. This narrative is of course inevitably shaped by personal experiences and situated knowledge. Being economic and social geographers we also will confine the following arguments to the human geography sub-field4.

The production of reality: three decades of German-speaking geographic research on gender in academic theses and journals

5Our bibliographic analysis was carried out during the year 2005. It covers the time period between 1978 and 2004. This period is defined by the first contribution in German-speaking geography with an explicit focus on women (Buff, 1978; see introduction) and the most recent and complete publication volume, which – by the time of our research – was the year 2004.

  • 5 A habilitation is, like a dissertation, a piece of scientific work which a person has to complete i (...)
  • 6 Currently this list is moderated and archived by Michaela Schier at German Youth Institute (DJI), M (...)

6There are scientific as well as pragmatic reasons for focusing on academic theses and journals in order to gain a representative impression of the tendencies and perspectives in German speaking feminist work using quantitative methods. Scientific theses – master’s theses, doctoral theses and habilitation5 theses – are without doubt directed most strongly to investigating and discussing questions of the research frontier in the field. Thanks to the initiative and systematic collection activities of some first generation feminist geographers, especially Elisabeth Baeschlin at the University of Berne and the team of Verena Meier Kruker at the University of Munich, the German-speaking feminist community is disseminating a comprehensive list of scientific theses that have been completed in the departments of geography in Switzerland, Austria and Germany since the emergence of feminist geographies6. Journal articles as well are sensitive to the emergence of new topics and approaches within the academic community (Garcia-Ramon & Caballe, 1997).

7A few well known monographs (other than published theses) and anthologies exist in German speaking feminist geography; Bock et al. (1989), Buehler et al. (1993), Aufhauser et al. (1999), Kramer (2002), Buehler & Meier Kruker (2004), Aufhauser (2005) and Fleischmann & Meyer-Hanschen (2005) being the most prominent ones. However, because of their limited number we did not include these publications in our quantitative analysis. The much greater number of theses and journal articles allowed us to sketch a quantitatively more representative picture of the evolution of the field.

8Our bibliographic analysis focuses on the following questions: Who are the authors and where (university departments, name and type of journals) have the texts been produced? How did the number of publications develop over the period? Which theoretical perspectives have been the guiding frameworks in producing this knowledge? Which topics have been discussed? We will present our results for the theses first and then those for the journal articles. The first part of the paper ends with some comparative conclusions of the two analyses carried out.

Bibliographic analysis of academic theses

  • 7 A document with the comprehensive reference list of the theses can be downloaded from : http://www. (...)

9Between 1978 and 2004 a total number of 154 master theses, 20 dissertations and one habilitation thesis with a focus on gender relevant issues were produced at the geography departments in Germany, Austria and in the German speaking territory of Switzerland7.

Authorship

10Only six out of the total of 175 theses (3 per cent) have been written by men; one dissertation by Juergen Schmude (1988) at the University of Heidelberg (chaired by Professor Peter Meusburger) and five master´s theses at the Universities of Zurich and Berne. This finding makes clear that in the German-speaking context, as everywhere else, women have been the driving forces and almost exclusive producers of knowledge in this innovative field of science. This is hardly a surprising finding for those familiar with gender research.

Locations of knowledge production

  • 8 In Switzerland there also are three geography departments at universities in the French-speaking te (...)
  • 9 This proportion is estimated from the published figure of about 2000 annual graduates in geography (...)

11Figure 1 shows the nation-states of the universities where the theses have been produced and the corresponding diplomas acquired. The fact that most of the theses have been produced in Germany is not surprising. Germany is a much bigger nation-state than is Switzerland or Austria. There are 63 geography departments in Germany, but only eight in Austria and five in the German speaking territory of Switzerland (Gebhardt et al., 2001, pp. 649-666)8. The number of students who receive a master’s diploma in geography from German universities is at least 20 times greater than the number of graduates from Swiss-German or Austrian universities9. Considering these proportions it becomes very clear that the relative importance of feminist theses produced in Switzerland is much greater than in Germany or Austria. This holds even true for the dissertations, even though as yet only four of 20 dissertations have been presented in geography departments in Switzerland. To the present date, the only feminist habilitation in the German-speaking context was also produced in Switzerland – by Verena Meier Kruker at the University of Basel (1994).

Figure 1. Number of theses produced in feminist geography between 1978 and 2004 and location of university.

Figure 1. Number of theses produced in feminist geography between 1978 and 2004 and location of university.

Source: Own research

  • 10 "Chair for social geography, political geography and gender studies".
  • 11 In 2003 the Department of Geography and Regional Science at the University of Vienna has revised it (...)

12How can we explain these differences between the three countries? Why have Swiss geography departments been much more productive in the creation of knowledge on gender and geography than German and Austrian departments? At a first glance these differences have to be closely related to individual persons: just a hand full of persons, mostly women, who have actively promoted feminist geography. During the time Verena Meier Kruker worked as a lecturer at the University of Basel a number of theses were produced there, and during the time she worked as a professor in Munich feminist geography began to flourish in Munich and to decline in Basel. At the University of Berne the lecturer Elisabeth Baeschlin has been promoting feminist geography effectively for many years. The Geography department of Berne is also the only one in the German-speaking context supporting a chair that explicitly includes gender studies10. Professor Doris Wastl-Walter was elected to this position in 1997. She has to be considered as the most influential and powerful person in feminist geography in the German-speaking context today. We do not want to go into more details on individual persons and their impact here, since this will be the topic of the second part of this paper. But we would like to point out the fact that all the three big geography departments in German-speaking Switzerland are offering or have offered institutionalized opportunities to study and graduate in feminist geography, while in Germany and Austria this has not been the case, apart from some notable exceptions such as the previously mentioned Universities of Munich and Heidelberg or the University of Vienna with assistant professor Elisabeth Aufhauser11.

  • 12 We thank Elisabeth Baeschlin for drawing our attention to this argument.
  • 13 There is plenty of evidence that representatives of the university establishment – both women and m (...)

13Ultimately, the relatively more favourable situation in Switzerland has to be related to the greater power of the Swiss women’s movement and its positive impact throughout the Swiss society12. Two outstanding political events can be mentioned here that had a big impact in Swiss society: the so called “nation-wide women’s strike day” in 1991 with half a million women on the streets demanding equal opportunities and the social upheaval in March 1993, when the designated woman for the Swiss national government was not elected by the national parliament. Again tens of thousands of women – and this time men too – demonstrated in the streets (Federal Commission for Women’s Issues, 1995). Gender equity issues were thus still being heavily debated in Switzerland at a time when in other already more progressive countries this was no longer the case. It seems that this effect also had a positive influence on student’s interest in gender studies and on the university establishment acknowledging the innovative potential of this new field of study less reluctantly than elsewhere13.

Evolution of the number of theses produced

  • 14 Because of their very limited number the theses produced in Austria can be neglected here.

14Figure 2 shows that only very few theses focusing on gender themes were produced in German-speaking geography before 1988, but beginning in that year the number of feminist theses grew considerably reaching a peak in 1994 and remaining quite high until 2001. After 2001 we have to note a significant decrease in the number of theses, which have declined today to the level of the early 90s. A more detailed analysis according to university locations shows that this drop of the numbers of produced theses is mainly caused by the evolution in Germany, because the number of theses produced in Switzerland did not fall14. This visible fall of the numbers of theses can be related to diverse causes, which we will discuss later.

Figure 2. Number of theses produced in German-speaking feminist geography by year 1978-2004.

Figure 2. Number of theses produced in German-speaking feminist geography by year 1978-2004.

Source: Own research

Evolution of the theoretical perspectives

  • 15 Andrea Maihofer does not claim explicitly to concentrate (only) on the German-speaking context. How (...)

15There are different and contested ways to differentiate between basic theoretical and methodological paradigms of feminist work. Widely known and acknowledged is the distinction between liberal, socialist, radical and post-modern feminist perspectives (Aufhauser, 2005; Johnson, 2000; Walby, 1990). The German sociologist Andrea Maihofer, professor at the University of Basel, has recently presented another, and in our view, very useful categorization of the corpus of knowledge in research on gender (Maihofer, 2004). She distinguishes four perspectives of research on gender in the German-speaking context15: women studies, gender relations studies, men or masculinity studies and gender studies. Andrea Maihofer claims that recent trends are characterized by a shift of importance away from women studies towards gender relations studies, masculinity studies and especially towards gender studies. Table 1 contains a short overview of the central characteristic elements of each perspective. According to Maihofer the gender studies perspective represents a very important theoretical shift in feminist research, distinguishing it from the other three perspectives. The gender studies perspective puts the actual processes of construction of gender identities in the centre of research and aims at deconstructing the dichotomous binary gender system. Or as Maihofer puts it: gender is transformed from a structural to a dynamic category and from an analytical instrument to the central object of research. This critical reflection of the binary gender system also stimulated critical reflections of other “real” or symbolic binary systems of categorization and their relations to and meanings for the gender system – e.g. nature-culture, body-spirit, public-private.

Table 1. Characteristics of different perspectives in research on gender (according to Maihofer, 2004).

Table 1. Characteristics of different perspectives in research on gender (according to Maihofer, 2004).
  • 16 German original : Der patriarchatskritische Impetus geht dabei keineswegs notwendigerweise verloren

16Andrea Maihofer does not use the term “feminist” in her conceptual framework of research on gender. This is one reason why her suggestions have provoked an ongoing debate among “feminist” and “gender studies” researchers. One argument against the term “gender” is rooted in the fear that its use instead of “feminist” would definitely separate academic research from women’s movements and weaken critical, socially engaged academic research (Fleischmann & Meyer-Hanschen, 2005; Scott, 2001). However, Maihofer claims explicitly that her conceptualization does not mean that gender studies have necessarily lost their “critical impetus against patriarchy”16 (Maihofer, 2004, p. 27). On the contrary she claims that the deconstruction of the binary gender system even stimulates a radical questioning of established gender orders in society. We agree with her point of view, even though we consider ourselves as persons pursuing feminist objectives in daily life as well as in research and teaching. However, we think that greater rhetorical distance from feminist ideologies and from the political women’s movement could also be a chance to move the scientific field of gender studies away from the academic periphery and motivate a greater share of scientists – women and men – to participate in the discourse. We are not arguing to exclude questions of unequal power relations and gender inequalities from knowledge production. But we are in favour of expanding and differentiating the field of research on gender beyond critical feminist perspectives.

  • 17 In fact, in order to get a more sound evaluation of the theoretical perspectives of the theses in G (...)

17We tentatively have allocated each thesis to one of the four perspectives distinguished by Andrea Maihofer. For a majority of the theses we had to rely exclusively on the titles. It was therefore not possible to allocate all the theses to a specific perspective17. According to our categorization, three-quarters of all the theses were produced from a women studies perspective (see Figure 3). We did not find any thesis with a men or masculinity studies perspective. The fact that the gender relations perspective and the gender studies perspective become more prominent in the two most recent time periods illustrates that in geographic research on gender a shift away from women studies has taken place. However, we have to note that even in the most recent time period more than 50 per cent of all the theses have been produced with a women studies perspective. Since we had to rely on the theses’ titles in most cases, it is not possible to differentiate between theses with a critical feminist perspective, for example, a socialist or a radical feminist perspective, and theses that have adopted a more descriptive or liberal perspective. We will come back to these results and their meanings for geographic gender studies in the conclusions of this bibliographic analysis.

Figure 3. Perspectives of theses 1978-2004 according to Table 1.

Source: Own research

Evolution of the topics discussed

18We also wanted to get an overview of the topics discussed in the theses and their evolution over time. Table 2 shows the topics and the related sub-topics we attributed to each thesis. The compilation of the topics and sub-topics was done in a quite pragmatic way according to our present state of knowledge and experience.

Table 2. Topics and sub-topics of geographic gender studies in German-speaking geography.

Table 2. Topics and sub-topics of geographic gender studies in German-speaking geography.

Source: Own research

  • 18 Because it was not possible to allocate specific spatial contexts to a majority of theses, the spat (...)

19Figure 4a shows that four topics – work and education, policy and politics, social institutions and public space and mobility – have each received an almost equal share of attention of about one fifth. Two topics – globalization & environment and body & individual – have been less important sharing together about one fifth of the total of defined topics. The evolution of the importance of the topics distinguished in the observed time period is shown in Figure 4b. The two topics work and education and politics and policy count for roughly half of all the topics in almost every time period. The topic public space and mobility lost considerable attention. By contrast, the three other topics gained attention, especially the topic social institutions. The latter reflects mainly the growing importance of the sub-topic networks and to a certain extent also of the sub-topics housing and neighbourhood, family forms and demography and social inequality18. We will now presenting our results for the journals, then draw some comparisons for both types of texts.

Figure 4. Topics of the theses.

Figure 4. Topics of the theses.

Source: Own research

Bibliographic analysis of journal articles

Definition of the sample

  • 19 The recognition criteria as well as the complete actual list of academic journals can be downloaded (...)
  • 20 "Berichte zur deutschen Landeskunde" edited in Germany and "Mitteilungen der österreichischen Geogr (...)

20We have analyzed 19 journals that can be divided in two distinct groups. The first group contains ten out of the 16 journals officially recognized as academic geographical journals by the Association of Geographers at German Universities (VGDH)19. We did not analyse four of these official academic journals, because they focus either on physical or technical geography and, as we very quickly discovered, hardly contain any articles discussing gender issues. Two official academic journals20 could not be included in our analysis, because they are not available at our library for the complete time period. The second group of journals consists of a sample of nine well-known practice-oriented journals read by many geographers in higher education, regional and urban planning, development politics and of course by many academic geographers as well. Table 3 contains the names of the journals analyzed. Two of the ten academic journals and four of the nine practice oriented journals are edited in Switzerland. All the other journals analyzed are edited in Germany. Thus, the sample contains a bias at the expense of Austrian journals and in favour of Swiss journals, especially in the case of the practice-oriented journals.

Table 3. Journals analyzed.

Table 3. Journals analyzed.
  • 21 The time period under investigation is 1978-2004. For justification see beginning of part I.
  • 22 A document with the comprehensive reference list of the journal articles can be downloaded from : h (...)

21We scrutinized all the volumes and numbers of the 19 journals that were issued between 1978 and 200421 aiming at identifying articles focussing on the gender dimension. Articles were included if the title, the subtitles or the abstract of an article explicitly contained expressions like women, men, or gender as were all articles in theme issues on gender (or women and men). This procedure has been previously proven as valid to deduce topics and perspectives of journal article (García-Ramón & Caballé, 1998). We will present our findings on the numbers, the relative importance, the authorship, the theoretical perspectives and the topics of the journal articles on gender and their evolution in time in the following points22.

Relative importance of articles focusing on the gender dimension

  • 23 This holds true for the following types of practice-oriented journals : regional and urban planning (...)
  • 24 "Europa Regional", "Petermanns geographische Mitteilungen" and "Raumforschung und Raumordnung".

22From the data presented in Table 4 it becomes obvious that the practice-oriented journals are relatively more liberal in including articles that address the gender dimension than are the “hard-core” academic journals23. There are even three academic journals that have not published a single article discussing the gender dimension between 1978 and 200424. It is also noteworthy that within the group of the academic journals the two journals edited in Switzerland have published considerably more articles discussing gender issues than the rest of the academic journals. This result corresponds with the previous observation that Swiss geography and its established protagonists are clearly more liberal and open towards the field of gender studies than those in Germany.

Table 4. Overall number of articles and number of articles focusing on gender 1978-2004.

Table 4. Overall number of articles and number of articles focusing on gender 1978-2004.

Source: Own research

Authorship

  • 25 The male authors in the academic journals are Peter Meusburger and Juergen Schmude (Meusburger & Sc (...)

23Female authors have written the vast majority of the journal articles (see Table 5). Only a few men25 have published in this field of research and mixed authorship is quite rare as well. The domination of female authors is somewhat less distinctive in the case of the journals that it is in the case of the academic theses, however. While 97 per cent of the academic theses have been written by women (see above), only 89 per cent of the academic journals and 83 per cent of the practice-oriented journals have exclusively female authors.

Table 5. Authorship by sex.

Table 5. Authorship by sex.

Source: Own research

24Figure 5 shows the authors of the articles according to their position in the hierarchical academic system at the time of publication. Though it was not possible to allocate an academic degree to 67 out of the total of 189 authors, it is clear that professors represent a very small minority. Overall there are fewer persons with a PhD degree than with a master’s diploma. Men authors never exceed women in numbers, but it is obvious that at the professorial level men are disproportionately better represented. The low representation of men might additionally be interpreted as an indication that for them, even more than for women, working and publishing on gender issues could be considered as a negative asset for an academic career (see note 11). We also observed that male journal authors paid comparatively more attention to women and gender relations in the Global South and barely addressed theoretical issues on gender or recent trends in research on gender (for more details see following points).

Figure 5. Position of authors in the hierarchical academic system by sex.

Figure 5. Position of authors in the hierarchical academic system by sex.

Source: Own research

Evolution of the number of produced articles and significance of theme issues

  • 26 English Translation : "Geography of today".

25The total number of articles on gender in the geographic journals shows a quite similar, yet even more pronounced evolution, to the number of theses: after a reluctant beginning in the 1980s the numbers of articles rose remarkably with an outstanding peak in 1995 and decreased abruptly in the following years (see Figures 6 and 7). Since we did not find any articles discussing a gender topic between 1978 and 1981, the theme issue “Women and Development” published in 1982 represents the starting point for journal publications on gender in the German-speaking context. Twelve articles with titles such as “The economic, social and cultural situation of women in the Third World” (Frieben, 1982), “My name is Edna Smith. A woman from Jamaica tells about herself and her life” (Stähr, 1982) or “Men are always in the centre: Perceptions of the relation between space and gender” (Hellings, 1982) make up this theme issue of the journal “Geographie heute”26, a practice-oriented journal for education at all school levels. The cover picture of the issue shows the back of a barefoot Nepali woman resting on a stone bench carrying a basket that serves her to transport heavy loads. In our view the picture symbolizes meanings like “women bearing the burden for development” or “women as passive victims of poverty”.

Figure 6. Number of articles in regular and theme issues 1978-2004.

Figure 6. Number of articles in regular and theme issues 1978-2004.

Source: Own research

Figure 7. Number of articles in academic and practice- oriented journals 1978-2004.

Figure 7. Number of articles in academic and practice- oriented journals 1978-2004.

Source: Own research

26Figures 6 and 7 show clearly that the theme issues, as well as the academic journals, are important in accounting for the pronounced peak of articles in 1995. In the sample of journals we found a total of nine theme issues published between 1982 and 2004, three in academic journals and six in practice-oriented journals. Two of the three academic theme issues were published in 1995 and the third in 1994. We can therefore conclude that overall the academic journals did not play the role of promoters in creating knowledge on gender and geography. Rather their editors, all of them established and renowned geographers, “jumped on the bandwagon” at a time, when gender and geography issues were most popular in the German-speaking context. It is also noteworthy that 65 per cent of all articles on gender in academic journals were published in theme issues, while this is the case only for 39 per cent of all the articles in practice-oriented journals. We conclude that the academic establishment of the German-speaking editorial boards still tends to exclude gender issues from the mainstream of regular knowledge production.

Evolution of the theoretical perspectives and significance of the theme issues

  • 27 There are only two articles that we decided to allocate to the gender studies perspective (Bauriedl (...)

27Figure 8 shows a shift in the prevailing theoretical perspectives in the journal articles. This shift supports Andrea Maihofer’s hypothesis described earlier in this paper. The transition from the originally dominating women studies perspective to other perspectives is even more distinctive than it was in the case of the theses (see Figure 3). During the most recent time period the gender relations perspective has gained equal weight as the women studies perspective27. This shift in theoretical perspectives, however, is hardly expressed in the titles and cover illustrations of the theme issues. Eight of nine theme issues carry the word “Women” on their cover pages (see Table 6) signaling that gender studies are about women and not about men or about gender relations. Moreover, an examination of the cover illustrations of the theme issues conveys the impression that research on gender is mainly research on women from “other” and mostly exotic cultures and on women in the Global South. Feminist authors have criticized this strategy of “othering” because it prevents integrating the problem into our own society and identifying with the research object (Fleischmann & Meyer-Hanschen, 2005).

Figure 8. Perspectives of the journal articles 1978-2004 according to Table 1.

Figure 8. Perspectives of the journal articles 1978-2004 according to Table 1.

Source: Own research

Table 6. Overview of theme issues published between 1978 and 2004.

Table 6. Overview of theme issues published between 1978 and 2004.

Source: Own research

Evolution of the topics discussed

  • 28 We counted ten state of the art articles, five articles discussing questions of integrating feminis (...)

28To examine the topics the journal articles focused on we used the same categorization as for the theses (see Table 2) adding one additional category Theory and State of the Art. This new category is composed of the sub-topics Curriculum, Methodology and State of the Art articles. From the total of 161 journal articles we found only 19, ten in the academic journals and nine in the practice-oriented journals, which primarily discussed theoretical or methodological topics28. These statistics make clear that geography on gender in the German-speaking context is mainly directed to practice-oriented, empirical research and less to methodological and theoretical debates. This is quite similar to what has been described for the Dutch context (Droogleever Fortuijn, 2002).

29As in the case of the theses, the journal articles also focus on a wide range of topics and sub-topics. It is quite self-evident that policy topics have always been very prominent in the practice-oriented journals (see Figure 9). Policy topics have, however, recently lost considerable relative attention in the academic journals in favour of theoretical topics and of the newly emerging topic, Body and Individual. These recent tendencies might reflect poststructuralist and postmodernist perspectives that clearly have also gained importance in gender studies in the German-speaking context (Aufhauser, 2005; Fleischmann & Meyer-Hanschen, 2005).

Figure 9. Topics of the journal articles.

Figure 9. Topics of the journal articles.

Source: Own research

Impact of the Anglo-American discourse in the German-speaking context

  • 29 Only extremely rarely were languages other than German or English included in references, the other (...)

30We would like to conclude our analysis of the journal articles with an estimation of the impact of the Anglo-American discourse on gender studies in the German-speaking context. Our estimation is based on the language used of the references cited. We distinguished the five categories that are shown in Figure 1029. Out of the total of 161 articles we were able to categorize 96 articles, because 65 articles from practice-oriented journals did not include a list of references. Figure 10 shows that English references always have consumed a large space in the German-speaking articles. In three out of the four depicted time periods, articles with exclusively German references represent a minority; only between 1990 and 1994 did about half of all journal articles mention German references exclusively. We even found four articles with no German references at all. One of them is a translation of a state of the art article written by Janice Monk and Janet Momsen for the theme issue on “Women related research” of the academic journal Geographische Rundschau (1995). The other three articles without any German references are published in practice-oriented journals in the field of development studies.

Figure 10. Linguistic differentiation of the articles’ references.

Figure 10. Linguistic differentiation of the articles’ references.

Source: Own research

31For the small community of German-speaking feminist geographers it is and has always been vital to participate and to be visible in the larger international community of geographers with an interest in research on gender. This of course means reading literature in other languages, publishing in other languages, and participating in international conferences outside the German-speaking context. In all of these endeavours communication in English is essential. Professor Doris Wastl-Walter at the University of Berne told us that she advises all her graduate and PhD students to publish in English in the first place and in German only as a second choice.

Comparative conclusions of the bibliographic analyses

32What kinds of gendered “realities” did the theses and journal articles produce during the last three decades? We will conclude this section of the paper by offering a comparative summary of our main results for the two different types of analyzed texts giving special attention to a discussion of possible causes for the remarkable decline of the numbers of texts produced in German-speaking geography towards the end of the time period.

Comparative summary of our main results

33On a general level the same overall trends characterize the theses and the journal articles. This result is by no means self-evident, however. To date it has been argued that because of the low degree of its institutionalization only student’s theses but not (official) publications could provide a representative picture of German-speaking feminist geography (Fleischmann & Meyer-Hanschen, 2005, p. 43; Garcia-Ramon & Caballe, 1998, p. 11). The results of our comparative analysis of theses and journal publications show that this assumption has to be revised.

34Women authors dominate the field. In this context, it is important to highlight that not only are many of the published articles written by women but that these are mainly young women and women outside the academic establishment. These results evoke ambiguous emotions. On the one hand we remember more open, more inspiring and more fruitful discussions in a congenial atmosphere, when (almost) only women researchers are present. On the other hand it is quite obvious that a field of research that is dominated by women tends to be devaluated in academia and in the wider society where men still possess more economic and especially symbolic capital (Bourdieu, 2001 (orig. 1998)).

  • 30 We refrain from evaluating the situation in Austria, because we were not able to include a represen (...)

35Academic theses with a focus on gender and geography are much more visible in Switzerland than in Germany and in Austria. Obviously, the motivation for students to acquire a degree in geography doing research on gender issues has been greatest in Switzerland during the time period under evaluation. Similarly, journals edited in Switzerland contained relatively more articles on gender topics than did journals edited in Germany30. Overall, it seems that defensive conservatism against the innovative field of research on gender is strongest in German geography departments and editorial boards.

36A shift in the theoretical perspectives away from the originally dominant women studies perspective towards the gender relations and the gender studies perspective can be detected in both bodies of text, but this shift is not yet very pronounced. Men or masculinity studies are missing completely in geographic theses and journals and the women studies perspective still is quite important. Obviously, there still is a need for more research on women’s experiences and on women’s circumstances of life, and the objectives of the women studies perspective as argued in the 1960s (see Table 1) are still valid guidelines in research. A stronger emphasis on men and masculinity studies and on gender studies in German-speaking geography, however, could lead to a significant improvement both in theory and practice and to a wider acknowledgement of research on gender in the scientific community.

Gender mainstreaming or back to the margins?

37The number of published articles explicitly focusing on gender in German-speaking journals decreased sharply in the most recent time period back to the pre-1990 level, while the number of theses has decreased somewhat less to the level of the early 90s (see Figures 3 and 8). Disregarding minor differences between the two types of work, we have to note a remarkable recent decline in the numbers of texts that foreground gender. Two diverse interpretations of this trend can be offered. On the one hand the decreasing numbers of theses and articles might signal an actual recession of interest in research on gender in geography. On the other hand the decline of theses and articles explicitly focusing on gender topics could be caused by a trend to mainstream gender aspects into a broader discussion of social difference and identity. In the second case the decreasing numbers of texts foregrounding gender might even be considered as a marker of success of research on gender. At the present time there are arguments to back up both of these diverging interpretations and we will outline each of them shortly.

  • 31 Feministisches GeorundMail : 23, July 2004 and 24, October 2004.
  • 32 Elisabeth Aufhauser, assistant professor at the university of Vienna, Austria, describes student’s (...)

38Some authors have noted a significant decline of interest in feminist or gender-oriented courses in teaching at the university level. In the recently published “Introduction into Feminist Geographies” Katharina Fleischmann and Ulrike Meyer-Hanschen mention that the demand for feminist courses and feminist workshops has recently decreased significantly (2005, p. 183). Lack of interest in specific courses on gender or in courses including gender topics has been noted also by several authors from different universities in different numbers of the newsletter for German-speaking feminist geography31. The production of a smaller number of academic theses and journal articles might be a logical outcome. It is difficult to suggest reasons for this trend. Katharina Fleischmann and Ulrike Meyer-Hanschen mention a massive backlash from the mainstream geography establishment (2005, p. 183). We would like to point out, however, that the shrinking interest of students in feminist or gender-oriented courses has only been reported for universities in Germany. In Switzerland the number of academic theses has not been declining so far and the same can be said for students’ interest in gender-oriented courses32.

  • 33 German original title : „Globalisierungs-Grenzen : Modernisierungsträume und Lebenswirklichkeiten i (...)
  • 34 German original title : "Arbeitsmärkte in grossstädtischen Agglomerationen. Auswirkungen der Deregu (...)
  • 35 German original title : "Räume und Orte als soziale Konstrukte. Plädoyer für einen verstärkten Einb (...)
  • 36 See homepage of project : http://www.geo.unizh.ch/nfp54/

39There also is evidence that the shrinking numbers of theses and journal articles could be caused, or at least partially be caused, by a rising number of theses and articles with a gender-mainstreaming perspective. We would like to illustrate this argument with three examples. Two German human geographers have recently published their habilitation theses. Christian Berndt published the results of his research project on the maquiladora industry in Ciudad Juarez (Berndt, 2004) with the title: “Limits of globalization: Dreams of modernisation and realities of life in northern Mexico”33 and a few months ago Susanne Albrecht published her habilitation thesis on the impacts of deregulation and flexibilization in the labour markets of the urban regions Stuttgart and Lyon (Albrecht, 2005)34. Both of the theses contain special chapters discussing sophisticated gender issues in theory and practice, but these issues are embedded in a wider overall research objective, and gender is only one among other dimensions of social identity and difference to be discussed. Furthermore the titles of both publications do not explicitly refer to the gender dimension. The third example is a journal article written by Heidi Kaspar and Elisabeth Buehler on socially sustainable design and management of urban public parks (Kaspar & Buehler, 2006)35. This article is the first product of a new research project that has been inspired very much by the work of Maria Dolors Garcia-Ramon and her team on public spaces in Barcelona (2004), as well as by Tovi Fenster (2004) and the feminist architect Ursula Paravicini (2003). The project of Elisabeth Buehler and Heidi Kaspar aims to identify elements of planning as well as strategies of operation that foster a socially sustainable appropriation of public parks. Social sustainability in a park ensures equal access and participation, irrespective of gender, age, nationality ethnicity or socio-economic status36.

  • 37 In order to evaluate this trend towards gender mainstreaming in German-speaking geography more seri (...)

40We assume that a number of other theses and journal articles in German-speaking geography mainstream the gender dimension in similar ways. This trend could be considered as a successful effect of theoretical conceptions of gender that have been developed mainly in feminist research which see gender as only one of many dimensions of social identity (see Table 1). The complex interplay of these dimensions has to be analyzed carefully and in relation to the individual research context. We think that we should also carefully discuss the meanings and possible impacts of this kind of gender mainstreaming, however. In a recent talk in Zurich the US historian Kathleen Canning criticised this trend of gender mainstreaming, pointing out the danger of weakening the subversive and analytical potential of feminist research that comes along with gender mainstreaming (Suter & Suter, 2005)37.

People, networks and institutions

  • 38 We apologize in advance to all the many geographers who are promoting geographic gender studies in (...)

41In the second part of this paper we are focusing on the actors of gender studies in German-speaking geography. We will highlight only some of the present leaders because the history of the feminist movement and its protagonists have recently been recorded in two different publications, one by Elisabeth Baeschlin in English (2002) and one by Katharina Fleischmann and Ulrike Meyer-Hanschen in German (2005). We will begin by describing our networks, then mention some of the most active and influential persons at the present time and conclude by mentioning some important elements of institutionalization38.

Networks

  • 39 German name : "Arbeitskreis Feministische Geographie". The name of this working group has been chan (...)
  • 40 Professor Hans Elsasser at the university of Zurich represents one of these few exceptions.

42The German-speaking “Feminist geography working group”39 was officially founded in 1989 and today has approximately 40 members. To date this working group has not reached the status of a commission with regular meetings and workshops or with regular official sessions at the biennial conferences of German-speaking Geographers. There are different, but highly interdependent reasons for this persistent marginalization within the scientific community. Firstly, as we mentioned previously, feminist geographers are widely confronted with a strong backlash from both male and female geographers in established positions. Only a few professors allow an active engagement in feminist geography during regular working hours40. Secondly, brilliant young women, but in positions with little decision-making authority, have constituted the steering committee of the network so far. Thirdly, we think that the critical mass of active members has not yet been reached. This means that a few persons have to do “all the work” with rather low response. The mere existence of a network of German-speaking feminist geographers should not be under-evaluated, however.

43The most important communication medium for the network of German-speaking feminist geographers is the newsletter “Feministisches Geo-RundMail”. From 1988 until 2000 Elisabeth Baeschlin at the University of Berne carefully edited 38 issues, supported occasionally by various other feminist geographers from Switzerland. Between 2000 and 2003 the editorial department of the newsletter was located in Munich directed by Professor Verena Meier Kruker and her PhD students Michaela Schier, Anne von Streit and Sabine Malecek. Since 2004 different individuals or small feminist networks at different universities have edited the newsletter which is sent to more than 100 recipients four times a year. A great archive of all the newsletters mailed electronically since the year 2000 is accessible on the homepage “Gender-Work-Geography”41 maintained by Michaela Schier in Munich.

People

44In this paragraph we would like to mention firstly the names of all those persons and networks who have edited the above-mentioned feminist newsletter since 2004: Eva Reisinger and the GRIPS network in Vienna, Elisabeth Buehler and the Gender Study Group in Zurich42, Anke Struever in Muenster (Germany), Kerstin Schenkel and Eva Reisinger in Berlin, Claudia Michel and the GIUB-à-GIUB network in Berne, Sybille Bauriedl in Hamburg, Claudia Wucherpfennig in Frankfurt, Katja Brundiers in Berne. These people are certainly among those keeping the network of German-speaking feminist geographers alive during the last two years. Most of them are PhD students, research assistants or lecturers at the different universities. Few of them are holding a permanent position at a geography department.

  • 43 There also are male professors who tolerate teaching and research activities on gender carried out (...)
  • 44 For more detailed information of achievements and interests see personal homepage of professor Dori (...)
  • 45 For more detailed informations of achievements and interests see personal homepage of Elisabeth Auf (...)

45Secondly we would like to highlight the only two feminist geographers, who are presently working as university professors in the German-speaking context: Professor Doris Wastl-Walter in Berne and Assistant Professor Elisabeth Aufhauser in Vienna. There are no recent statistics on the proportion of women holding assistant or full professorships in German-speaking geography. The most recent estimation mentions a proportion of about 10 per cent (Fleischmann & Meyer-Hanschen, 2005, p. 38). Within this very small number of female professors only Elisabeth Aufhauser and Doris Wastl-Walter are explicitly promoting geographic gender studies43. Since Doris Wastl-Walter was elected as full professor in Berne in 1997 she has realised great achievements in feminist research and teaching as well as in promoting young female academics. As president of the IGU Commission on Geography and Public Policy and editor of the journal Border Regions Studies Doris Wastl-Walter also has a wide international reputation44. Assistant Professor Elisabeth Aufhauser’s main focus in research is directed to transdisciplinary projects in gender sensitive regional development and gender mainstreaming in regional development politics within Austria and the European Union. She has been engaged in equal opportunities programs at the university level and in institutionalizing a gender sensitive teaching program45.

Institutions

46Three interdisciplinary institutions in the field of gender studies in Switzerland in which feminist geographers are considerably involved are worthy of mention. In the context of German-speaking gender studies we consider recent interdisciplinary dynamics as greater than those within geography. The first institution we will mention is the Interdisciplinary Centre for Women and Gender Studies at the University of Berne46. Doris Wastl-Walter was one of the eight founders, all of them women professors, of this institution and has been its first director since 2001. The Centre is directed at a sustainable institutionalization of women- and gender studies at the University of Berne. The web-platform Gender Campus Switzerland http://www.gendercampus.ch/​default.htm initiated and maintained by the Centre is one of the first sustainable achievements. This electronic market place offers comprehensive information on events, institutions and developments in the field of gender studies for the entire German-speaking Swiss context.

47Post-graduate interdisciplinary research training groups that have been established in the field of gender studies are the noteworthy second institution. These have been established through a collaboration of six universities. They represent a most promising form of promoting young scientists who are carrying out a research project in the field of gender studies. Several PhD students with a master’s diploma in geography are participating in the groups at the universities of Zurich, Basel, Berne and Geneva.

48The third institution to be mentioned here is the annual one-day interdisciplinary workshop work in progress gender studies. This workshop provides a platform for researchers at a specific university to present and discuss the results of their theses and research projects. Three feminist lecturers from Geography, History and German linguistics founded this workshop at the University of Zurich in 2001. It is financed and supported by the Centre of Competence Gender Studies of the University of Zurich and has been a very successful and appreciated event since its start. Meanwhile other universities in Switzerland have also institutionalized similar one-day workshops.

Conclusions

49The picture we have drawn of geographic gender studies in the German-speaking context reveals light and dark sides. Progress and persistence, dynamics and stagnation characterize the evolution of gender studies in German-speaking geography during the last decades. We conclude by trying to highlight the four most important tendencies observed, which we have termed as institutional persistence, gender mainstreaming, interdisciplinarity and internationality. What are the meanings and the impacts of these tendencies for the future of German-speaking geography on gender?

50We interpret the persistent disengagement of male geographers, the extremely small proportion of feminist professors and the very small number of articles with an explicit gender perspective in regular academic journals as an expression of a persistent resistance of the academic establishment, mainly in Germany and Austria, against the innovative field of gender studies. However, in spite of the negative tendencies observed in the past, we expect a more favourable development in the future. The younger generation of geographers includes quite a few people with a broad knowledge of and an interest in gender studies. Some of them will pursue an academic career implementing their knowledge on gender in geography. We are convinced, therefore, that the meaning of the gender dimension will be better included into teaching curricula and research programmes in the future than it has been in the past.

51One strategy for doing so is to include the gender dimension in broader research and teaching topics and to discuss the meaning of gender in relation to other dimensions of social identity. We have given some examples of this gender mainstreaming strategy and we expect that it will gain importance in the future. Even though gender mainstreaming must be regarded as a successful effect of previous research on gender, however, it hardly includes critical analyses of patriarchal structures and analytical depth on the meaning of gender. Therefore it will always be necessary to offer special courses and carry out special research projects positioning the gender dimension in the centre.

52Interdisciplinary collaboration has always been a characteristic element in the field of gender studies. Like environmental studies or development studies, gender studies transgress disciplinary boundaries. We have shown, based on the example of Switzerland, that the interdisciplinary dynamics in the field of gender studies have been greater than the ones within geography. For the small community of German-speaking geographers interested in research on gender, interdisciplinary collaboration has to be regarded as a chance, because it offers one possibility to reach the critical mass for an academic discourse.

53Internationality is the fourth important tendency of German-speaking geography on gender we wish to highlight. Since its beginnings, participation in an international discourse has been essential for German-speaking geographic gender studies. It certainly is no accident that the numbers of feminist theses and journal articles rose significantly after 1988, the year, when the “IGU Working Group on Gender and Geography” was founded in Sydney. For the small community of German-speaking geographers interested in research on gender international collaboration and networking is another great chance to participate in a larger academic discourse and to override discursive isolation.

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Notes

1 English translation: Migration of the Woman (singular) from Mountain Areas.

2 The nation-state Switzerland is divided officially in four linguistic territories. Approximately two-thirds of the population is living in the German-speaking territory. The French-, Italian- and Romonsch-speaking territories constitute the rest with approximately 20 per cent, 10 per cent and 1 per cent of the population (Office fédéral de la statistique 2005). This paper concentrates mainly on publications, persons, networks and institutions within the German-speaking context.

3 At the time this paper was written (during the year 2005) "Gender and Sustainable Development" (Premchander & Mueller 2004) consisted of 21 pages and was available only as an online report. Meanwhile the same authors and the same publisher edited a 364 pages anthology with the – quite similar – title : "Gender and Sustainable Development : Case Studies from NCCR North-South" (Premchander & Mueller 2006). The online report was meant to produce a "kick-off" effect (p. 6) on applying gender sensitive research in the framework of the NCCR North-South. The edited book prooves that this kick-off effect has been quite successful.

4 However, we would like to mention here that there is a group of feminist geographers in the German-speaking context, which has initiated a discourse in the field of critical feminist geo-science (Bauriedl 2003 ; Schenkel 2002).

5 A habilitation is, like a dissertation, a piece of scientific work which a person has to complete in order to be qualified and eligible for a professorship (chair) at a university. Only very recently, and only at some universities in the German-speaking context, has this requirement begun to be replaced by tenure track schemes.

6 Currently this list is moderated and archived by Michaela Schier at German Youth Institute (DJI), Munich : http://www.goethe.de/wis/fut/prj/for/jug/en8450228.htm

7 A document with the comprehensive reference list of the theses can be downloaded from : http://www.geo.unizh.ch/

8 In Switzerland there also are three geography departments at universities in the French-speaking territory (Geneva, Lausanne, Neuchâtel). To our knowledge gender has not been included yet, neither in teaching curricula nor in theses produced in Swiss-French geography. The university in the Italian-speaking territory of Switzerland does not have a geography department and there is no university at all in the Romonsch territory.

9 This proportion is estimated from the published figure of about 2000 annual graduates in geography in Germany (Bundesagentur für Arbeit 2005 : 7) and the fact that in German-speaking Swiss universities as well as in Austrian universities the equivalent number is less than 100 graduates.

10 "Chair for social geography, political geography and gender studies".

11 In 2003 the Department of Geography and Regional Science at the University of Vienna has revised its study plans to "mainstream" gender studies in accordance with University policies and to pass the ministerial evaluation processes. The new requirements in geography include incorporation of gender perspectives into i) the study program for high school teachers ; ii) the theoretical and empirical geography program ; and iii) the spatial research and planning program. A requirement has also been added to the cartography program that it attend to critical reflection on the social starting points and implications of different techniques and visualisation of geographic data (reported by Elisabeth Aufhauser in the IGU newsletter number 30, May 2003).

12 We thank Elisabeth Baeschlin for drawing our attention to this argument.

13 There is plenty of evidence that representatives of the university establishment – both women and men – in all the three countries did turn down initiatives aiming at a better institutionalisation of gender studies and did discourage persons from engaging with gender topics (Baeschlin 2002).

14 Because of their very limited number the theses produced in Austria can be neglected here.

15 Andrea Maihofer does not claim explicitly to concentrate (only) on the German-speaking context. However, she cites almost exclusively German-speaking authors.

16 German original : Der patriarchatskritische Impetus geht dabei keineswegs notwendigerweise verloren.

17 In fact, in order to get a more sound evaluation of the theoretical perspectives of the theses in German-speaking geography the implementation of more elaborated methods would be required. With this objective in mind Karin Baechli carried out a detailed discourse analysis for her master’s thesis on the representations of the topic "Public space and gender" in geographic journals (Baechli 2006). The summary of this thesis can be downloaded from http://www.geo.uzh.ch/en/units/wgg#completed_projects (German only).

18 Because it was not possible to allocate specific spatial contexts to a majority of theses, the spatial perspectives have not been analyzed systematically. However, we counted 37 theses focusing on rural spaces and only 24 focusing on urban spaces. Forty-six of the 175 theses focused on the Global South.

19 The recognition criteria as well as the complete actual list of academic journals can be downloaded from : http://www.wiso.uni-koeln.de/wigeo/ veroeff/pdf.html (in German only).

20 "Berichte zur deutschen Landeskunde" edited in Germany and "Mitteilungen der österreichischen Geographischen Gesellschaft" edited in Austria.

21 The time period under investigation is 1978-2004. For justification see beginning of part I.

22 A document with the comprehensive reference list of the journal articles can be downloaded from : http://www.geo.unizh.ch/

23 This holds true for the following types of practice-oriented journals : regional and urban planning, higher education and development policies but not for the magazines of geography departments.

24 "Europa Regional", "Petermanns geographische Mitteilungen" and "Raumforschung und Raumordnung".

25 The male authors in the academic journals are Peter Meusburger and Juergen Schmude (Meusburger & Schmude 1991), Karl Vorlaufer (Vorlaufer 1985) and Othmar Schwank (Bajrachaya & Schwank 1994).

26 English Translation : "Geography of today".

27 There are only two articles that we decided to allocate to the gender studies perspective (Bauriedl et al. 2000 ; Kutschinske & Meier Kruker 2000). As with the theses, we have found no article with a men or masculinity studies perspective.

28 We counted ten state of the art articles, five articles discussing questions of integrating feminist issues into university or high school education and four articles dealing with methodology.

29 Only extremely rarely were languages other than German or English included in references, the other languages being principally Spanish or French.

30 We refrain from evaluating the situation in Austria, because we were not able to include a representative sample of Austrian journals in our analysis.

31 Feministisches GeorundMail : 23, July 2004 and 24, October 2004.

32 Elisabeth Aufhauser, assistant professor at the university of Vienna, Austria, describes student’s interests for feminist courses as "fluctuating" (oral information).

33 German original title : „Globalisierungs-Grenzen : Modernisierungsträume und Lebenswirklichkeiten in Nordmexiko".

34 German original title : "Arbeitsmärkte in grossstädtischen Agglomerationen. Auswirkungen der Deregulierung und Flexibilisierung am Beispiel der Regionen Stuttgart und Lyon".

35 German original title : "Räume und Orte als soziale Konstrukte. Plädoyer für einen verstärkten Einbezug sozialer Aspekte in die Gestaltung städtischer Parkanlagen".

36 See homepage of project : http://www.geo.unizh.ch/nfp54/

37 In order to evaluate this trend towards gender mainstreaming in German-speaking geography more seriously, other and more qualitative methods than the ones used here would be required.

38 We apologize in advance to all the many geographers who are promoting geographic gender studies in teaching and networking in Austria, Germany and German-speaking Switzerland, whose names could not be mentioned in this paper.

39 German name : "Arbeitskreis Feministische Geographie". The name of this working group has been changed to Arbeitskreis Geographie & Geschlecht" (English : "working group geography & gender") in November 2005.

40 Professor Hans Elsasser at the university of Zurich represents one of these few exceptions.

41 http://www.gender-arbeit-geographie.de/. Verena Meier Kruker established this homepage during the time, when she held a professorship in Munich (1998-2003). Since 2004 Verena Meier Kruker, one of the first generation feminist geographers in German-speaking geography, is working in the management of a senior high school in Switzerland.

42 Homepage of the Zurich Gender Study Group : http://www.geo.uzh.ch/en/units/economic-geography/services/gender-study-group

43 There also are male professors who tolerate teaching and research activities on gender carried out by members of their staff ; however, experience tells that they seldom actively promote such activities.

44 For more detailed information of achievements and interests see personal homepage of professor Doris Wastl-Walter : http://www.geography.unibe.ch/content/index_fra.html

45 For more detailed informations of achievements and interests see personal homepage of Elisabeth Aufhauser : http://homepage.univie.ac.at/Elisabeth.Aufhauser/.

46 Homepage : http://www.izfg.unibe.ch/.

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List of illustrations

Title Figure 1. Number of theses produced in feminist geography between 1978 and 2004 and location of university.
Credits Source: Own research
URL http://journals.openedition.org/belgeo/docannexe/image/11325/img-1.jpg
File image/jpeg, 40k
Title Figure 2. Number of theses produced in German-speaking feminist geography by year 1978-2004.
Credits Source: Own research
URL http://journals.openedition.org/belgeo/docannexe/image/11325/img-2.jpg
File image/jpeg, 340k
Title Table 1. Characteristics of different perspectives in research on gender (according to Maihofer, 2004).
URL http://journals.openedition.org/belgeo/docannexe/image/11325/img-3.jpg
File image/jpeg, 980k
URL http://journals.openedition.org/belgeo/docannexe/image/11325/img-4.jpg
File image/jpeg, 348k
Title Table 2. Topics and sub-topics of geographic gender studies in German-speaking geography.
Credits Source: Own research
URL http://journals.openedition.org/belgeo/docannexe/image/11325/img-5.jpg
File image/jpeg, 544k
Title Figure 4. Topics of the theses.
Credits Source: Own research
URL http://journals.openedition.org/belgeo/docannexe/image/11325/img-6.jpg
File image/jpeg, 420k
Title Table 3. Journals analyzed.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/belgeo/docannexe/image/11325/img-7.jpg
File image/jpeg, 360k
Title Table 4. Overall number of articles and number of articles focusing on gender 1978-2004.
Credits Source: Own research
URL http://journals.openedition.org/belgeo/docannexe/image/11325/img-8.jpg
File image/jpeg, 188k
Title Table 5. Authorship by sex.
Credits Source: Own research
URL http://journals.openedition.org/belgeo/docannexe/image/11325/img-9.jpg
File image/jpeg, 292k
Title Figure 5. Position of authors in the hierarchical academic system by sex.
Credits Source: Own research
URL http://journals.openedition.org/belgeo/docannexe/image/11325/img-10.jpg
File image/jpeg, 40k
Title Figure 6. Number of articles in regular and theme issues 1978-2004.
Credits Source: Own research
URL http://journals.openedition.org/belgeo/docannexe/image/11325/img-11.jpg
File image/jpeg, 464k
Title Figure 7. Number of articles in academic and practice- oriented journals 1978-2004.
Credits Source: Own research
URL http://journals.openedition.org/belgeo/docannexe/image/11325/img-12.jpg
File image/jpeg, 496k
Title Figure 8. Perspectives of the journal articles 1978-2004 according to Table 1.
Credits Source: Own research
URL http://journals.openedition.org/belgeo/docannexe/image/11325/img-13.jpg
File image/jpeg, 288k
Title Table 6. Overview of theme issues published between 1978 and 2004.
Credits Source: Own research
URL http://journals.openedition.org/belgeo/docannexe/image/11325/img-14.jpg
File image/jpeg, 832k
Title Figure 9. Topics of the journal articles.
Credits Source: Own research
URL http://journals.openedition.org/belgeo/docannexe/image/11325/img-15.jpg
File image/jpeg, 716k
Title Figure 10. Linguistic differentiation of the articles’ references.
Credits Source: Own research
URL http://journals.openedition.org/belgeo/docannexe/image/11325/img-16.jpg
File image/jpeg, 352k
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References

Bibliographical reference

Elisabeth Buehler and Karin Baechli, From Migration der Frau aus Berggebieten to Gender and Sustainable Development : Dynamics in the field of gender and geography in Switzerland and in the German-speaking contextBelgeo, 3 | 2007, 275-300.

Electronic reference

Elisabeth Buehler and Karin Baechli, From Migration der Frau aus Berggebieten to Gender and Sustainable Development : Dynamics in the field of gender and geography in Switzerland and in the German-speaking contextBelgeo [Online], 3 | 2007, Online since 11 November 2013, connection on 28 March 2024. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/belgeo/11325; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/belgeo.11325

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About the authors

Elisabeth Buehler

Department of Geography, University of Zurich (Switzerland), buehler@geo.unizh.ch

Karin Baechli

Department of Geography, University of Zurich (Switzerland), karinbaechli@postmail.ch

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Copyright

CC-BY-4.0

The text only may be used under licence CC BY 4.0. All other elements (illustrations, imported files) are “All rights reserved”, unless otherwise stated.

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