Practicing feminist geography in Taiwan

Abstract

Despite lowering fertility level, and rising education for women, traditional gender roles have remained intact in Taiwan. Women and Gender Studies has thrived in the last three decades with the establishment of 18 research programs, while proliferation of courses and increasing publications on women and gender have produced significant impact on the local academic community. However, gender studies in geography occupy a marginal position in feminist studies, and gender blindness still prevails in various sub-disciplines of Geography. To get an inside view of the current practice of Gender and Geography in Taiwan, this paper draws on twelve in-depth interviews of feminist geographers by looking into why they pursue gender and geography in teaching and research, why they consider it important to include feminist geography in their curriculum, what opportunities were given, what obstacles exist to offer courses on gender and geography, and what impacts have been produced on students. This case study intends to give voice to feminist geographers in Taiwan, and to enrich the continuing agenda of the IGU Commission on Gender and Geography. In the future, student mentoring, transdisciplinary studies and collaborative efforts would be critical in advancing the status of feminist geography in Taiwan.

Keywords:

• Collaboration
• feminist scholarship
• gender-blind geography
• student mentoring
• Taiwan

Acknowledgements

Our gratitude goes to the research participants who generously gave their time and share their thoughts with us. We sincerely thank the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments which have greatly helped the development of our ideas. Suggestions made by Janice Monk at the early stage of writing, editorial suggestions by Becky Stephenson and references given by Lynda Johnston and Robyn Longhurst have all helped as we progressed with this project. We also thank our students who took our courses over the years, and a few who typed up our fieldnotes in Chinese, updated the Appendix, and formatted the paper. A final touch in English-editing is given by Brian Scanlon.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Lan-Hung Nora Chiang is Professor Emeritus at the Department of Geography, National Taiwan University. Her recent research focuses on Taiwanese migrants to developed countries. She sits on the editorial boards of several journals and has edited many books, monographs, conference proceedings and journal theme issues. Between 1988 and 1992, she served on the Steering Committee of the IGU Gender Commission (formerly Study Group on Gender). She was a member of the Editorial Board of Gender, Culture and Place from 2007 to 2011. She is a member of Society of Women Geographers since 2009.

Yu-Ling Cathy Song is Professor and Chair of the the Department of Geography at National Chang-hua University of Education in Taiwan. In recent years her published work included displaced residents in Shanghai, housing choices of the middle class in Beijing and Shanghai, new urban migrants in Beijing. She is currently undertaking research on the global mobility of Taiwanese professionals. She has been teaching Gender, Space and Society for several years at the University.