Citation

Rickards L, Rossi U. Dialog. Human Geogr. 2018; 8(1): 59-60.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2018, SAGE Publishing)

DOI

10.1177/2043820618759354

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Contravening the Dialogues' norm of a maximum of two book forums per issue, this issue features three review forums. All the books are authored by distinguished female scholars in their fields (human geography, science studies and social anthropology). We believe it is a fitting start to the year, given the massive resurgence of the women's movement across the world (particularly in its Western hemisphere) over the last 12 months, illustrated by a series of seminal events. Key was the Women's March in January 2017 when thousands of women marched in Washington DC and other US cities to protest the election of Donald Trump; an event just repeated in January 2018 with equal fervour. The year 2017 also saw the widespread adoption of March 8, Women's Day, as a day of women's strike in response to the call from the 'Paro International de Mujeres' in Argentina to protest 'the current social, legal, political, economic, moral and verbal violence experienced by contemporary women'. From October onwards, the #MeToo and related movement erupted, denouncing ingrained practices of sexual harassment affecting women in the workplace across different sectors. For these reasons, it is likely that just as 2011 is often remembered as the year in which a new era for radical politics took form with the unprecedented rise of mass justice movements in cities across the world, 2017 will be remembered as the year in which women began to forcefully reassert their presence on the global public sphere.

These events have involved academia in multiple ways. Female scholars have been among those at the forefront of this new wave of women's protest, and resultant stories have made clear - or perhaps clearer - that higher education is far from immune from sexual harassment and gender discrimination. It is also timely to reflect on how feminist and other geographers have long been engaged in critical research on and around the problems now being re-protested against. Not limited to work explicitly focused on women, the latter research points to the depth and complexity of the challenges involved. Along with numerous other imperial axes of difference, gender inequality is not reducible to exceptional moments or behaviour but is instead coproduced with hardened structures of thought and institutionalized relations. It requires ongoing, dynamic research from all angles; research that is challenging and challenged, pushing us to think and act differently and see women's inequality in the context of broader geographies. Such scholarship seems more important than ever, both for the insights and tools it can offer the women's movement as it strives to generate common ground without imposing homogenization, and for its part in demonstrating the uniqueness, creativity, intelligence and mettle of female scholars...

Language: en