Feminine positions: Maps for a gendered urban historiography

Abstract

The following article explores the documentary value of maps for a gender approach to urban historiography. It takes part in the discussion about considering an expanded agenda of disciplines to make women’s space production visible in the past, proposing the use of cartographies as primary sources and tools. Different sources have been used to both identify and locate places in the city of Santiago de Chile that account for the position (in both a cultural and geodesic sense of the term) of women in the city. These have been organized into two main types that may be recognized in the sources: institutions (religious, educational, health, etc.) and individuals (people). The positions identified for both types show a correlation between gender and urban processes, such as capitalist modernization, social segregation in the city space, the construction of female role models and inequalities between men and women. Thus, it seeks to use space to answer Joan Scott’s (1986, 2008, 2010)
question regarding the usefulness of gender as a category for historiographical analysis.