Showing papers by "Kendra Strauss published in 2016"
TL;DR: The authors discuss a number of recent efforts to critique, dismantle and problematize the categorical ontologies of the urban world and articulate an overarching epistemological framework for urban communities.
Abstract: In this paper, we discuss a number of recent efforts to critique, dismantle and problematize the categorical ontologies of ‘the urban’ and articulate an overarching epistemological framework for ur...
94 citations
TL;DR: For instance, this article found that although the gender gap is closing within higher education geography in the UK, there are significant ongoing gender disparities, and that the long and demanding process of reducing gender inequalities (alongside other, equally vital intersectional inequalities) requires continued commitment.
Abstract: This paper evidences persistent gender inequalities in UK higher education (HE) geography departments. The two key sources of data used are: Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) data for staff and students, which affords a longitudinal response to earlier surveys by McDowell and McDowell and Peake of women in UK university geography departments, and a qualitative survey of the UK HE geography community undertaken in 2010 that sought more roundly to capture respondent reflections on their careers, choices, status and experiences. Findings show that although the gender gap is closing within HE geography in the UK there are significant ongoing gender disparities. Therefore, the paper argues that the long and demanding process of reducing gender inequalities (alongside other, equally vital intersectional inequalities) requires continued commitment. Furthermore, respondents evidence the cost of these inequalities: enablers and barriers to job security and career progression can have long-term impacts on quality of life and financial security, and affect personal life decisions. In recent years the UK-based Athena Swan and Gender Equality Charter Mark agendas have prompted universities to address gendered disparities and the authors note a changing zeitgeist. The survey findings point to the need for sustained leadership within geography departments to address the day-to-day gender – and other – inequalities experienced in the workplace.
42 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors explore the potential for workers to intervene in such globalizing processes and highlight both the ability of grassroots workers to mobilize their own spatial networks but also their limitations in an increasingly hostile neoliberal landscape.
Abstract: Trade unions are facing a series of challenges around place-based forms of work in industries such as construction, transport and public services. New spatial strategies by employers involving corporate reorganization, increased outsourcing and the use of migrant labour, allied to a deepening of neoliberal governance processes are accelerating a race to the bottom in wages and conditions. Drawing upon the experience of two recent labour disputes in the UK—at Heathrow Airport and Lindsey Oil Refinery—we explore the potential for workers to intervene in such globalizing processes. We highlight both the ability of grassroots workers to mobilize their own spatial networks but also their limitations in an increasingly hostile neoliberal landscape.
17 citations
TL;DR: The role and influence of feminist work in economic geography has been discussed at the fourth Global Conference on Economic Geography (GCEG) held in Oxford, UK in August 2015.
Abstract: This special section of Environment and Planning A is the outcome of a panel we organized at the Fourth Global Conference on Economic Geography (GCEG) held in Oxford, UK in August 2015. The panel was intended to reflect on the role and influence of feminist work in economic geography; a sub-discipline distinguished by its heterogeneous theoretical and methodological approaches. In particular, it sought to encourage reflection on the extent to which economic geography as a sub-discipline has responded to feminist interventions that have drawn attention to the cultural construction of difference in ways that pose a challenge to its more generalized categories and frameworks of analysis (for example, regional development, labour, the firm, the state). Taking as our starting point, Linda McDowell’s (1991) article ‘Life without Father and Ford: The New Gender Order of Post-Fordism’, which was published a quarter of a century ago (and revisited 10 years later, see McDowell, 2001), we asked to what extent and in what ways feminism (here referred to in the singular, but clearly ‘feminisms’ in practice) has changed the way economic geography is done? To what degree has the sub-discipline benefitted from the attention paid over the past 25 years to reproductive and domestic labour, the gender order and the interactions of categories of difference such as gender, class and race in our research enquiries? In presenting a case for the importance of gender in understanding an emerging postFordist economy, McDowell’s (1991) article was tremendously significant in pushing scholars of economic geography to examine the interconnections between the sphere of production and the sphere of social reproduction (a category of analysis which includes the family, the community and the welfare state). It highlighted the gendering of skills
14 citations