A geography of gender relations: role patterns in the context of different regional industrial development

Abstract

Feminist geographers state that gender relations produce spatial structures and that in turn, these structures help to maintain these relations. In order to explore this idea, this paper considers the household role pattern of women in two different economic regions with different histories of industrial activity: the textile region in Ghent and the coal basin in Limburg, Belgium. The paper emphasises the influence of these regional economic developments on the time budget of women and on the effect of their activities on their use and experience of space. It pays particular attention to the crucial role played by the social infrastructure available at different spatial levels. A comparison of both regions discloses a remarkable and lingering difference in women’s role pattern and, by extension, the male role pattern.