PARTICIPATION, POWER, AND POLICY - DEVELOPING A GENDER-SENSITIVE POLITICAL-GEOGRAPHY

What are the prospects for developing a gender-sensitive political geo graphy? Progress in this area has been made in the past years, but it remains an on-going project. Three approaches to explore a gender-sens itive political geography are suggested here that can help to organize research and instruction. First, participation is taken to mean invol vement in both formal political activities such as voting and holding office, and other forms of activism such as protests and interest grou p memberships. Second, power relations are taken as broadly political to demonstrate the importance of gender-based power structures at a va riety of scales and in different spatial contexts. Third, I examine th ree recent policy developments in which the impacts of legislation are both gendered and spatially variable. Specifically, the Family and Me dical Leave Act of 1993, the raising of the minimum wage, and welfare reform are used as examples in the application of gender-sensitive pol itical geographical analysis. Finally, the very construction of gender across space and in places is suggested to be a political process tha t must be critically investigated.