Women and GIS: Geospatial Technologies and Feminist Geographies

Sara McLafferty
Department of Geography / University of Illinois / Urbana / IL / USA

Abstract
This article explores the emerging intersections between feminism and GIS in relation to changes in GIS technologies and the impacts of such technologies on womens lives. I argue that the past decade has seen an increasing feminization of GIS that involves innovations in GIS technologies and research practices, growing critical self-awareness among GIS researchers, and the development of feminist visualization as a research tool. At the same time, GIS and related geospatial technologies have become more embedded and pervasive in everyday life. The effects of new geospatial technologies on the gendered spaces of social and political life at a variety of spatial scales are discussed, with particular attention to gendered identities, geographical dimensions of everyday life, and womens activism.
Keywords: GIS, feminism, geospatial technologies

sume Re
minisme et les syste ` mes dinformation ge ographique (SIG), les modifications Larticle porte sur les croisements entre le fe es aux technologies lie es aux SIG et les effets de ces technologies sur la vie des femmes. Lauteur affirme que, apporte es, les SIG se sont fe minise es . Par exemple, il y a eu des innovations en matie ` re de depuis une dizaine danne me quune prise de conscience de soi accrue parmi les chercheurs, et la technologies et de pratiques de recherche, de me minine est devenue un outil de recherche. Au me me moment, les SIG et les technologies ge ospatiales visualisation fe es se sont taille une place dans la vie quotidienne. Lauteur parle aussi des effets des nouvelles technologies associe ospatiales sur les aspects de la vie sociale et politique divise s selon le sexe, qui sont de finis par une varie te de chelles ge ` re est accorde e aux identite s selon le sexe, aux dimensions ge ographiques de la vie spatiales. Une attention particulie ` lactivisme des femmes. quotidienne et a
s: SIG, fe minisme, technologies ge ospatiales Mots cle

Innovation often takes place when divergent schools of thought are connected areas of endeavour that, on the surface, have little in common. A new lens shifts our worldview, bringing new areas into focus and opening up new avenues of dialogue. This is beginning to happen between GIS and feminist geography two of the most dynamic research areas in geography during the past decade. Once separated by a wide epistemological chasm, the two fields are moving closer together. GIS researchers

and feminist geographers are starting to talk and collaborate, and a small but growing group of researchers have their feet firmly planted in both fields. The result is an emerging feminization of GIS. This trend is tied to important innovations in GIS technologies and research practices, including the incorporation of new types of data in GIS, increases in critical self-awareness among GIS researchers, and the development of feminist visualization as a research tool.

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Exploring the connections between feminism and GIS also forces us to look outside the box to examine GIS as more than a research and visualization tool. As geospatial technologies become more pervasive and mobile, their impacts extend far beyond the research community, affecting the gendered social relations of everyday life. Todays geospatial technologies comprise much more than geographic information systems. Information from surveillance cameras, vehicle navigation systems, cellular phones, tracking systems, and pointof-sale databases is geographic information in the sense that it is tied to locations on the earths surface. The computerized systems that link, analyse, and display such information are rudimentary GIS. Thus, for the purposes of this article, I define GIS quite broadly to encompass digital geographic information and the wide array of technologies for collecting, manipulating, and transmitting that information over increasingly large distances, as well as communications technologies that enable and enhance long-distance spatial interactions. A feminist perspective calls for critically examining the situatedness of GIS and emerging geospatial technologies and how they are affecting the gendered spaces of social and political life at a variety of spatial scales. As the technologies become more embedded in daily life, they begin to influence womens identities, their political activism, and their interactions and activities at home and work. Feminism heightens our awareness of these important connections. This article is organized in three sections. The first section is a brief discussion of feminist technology studies and feminist epistemology. The second examines the gendered construction of GIS, highlighting the evolution of the technology toward a more feminist model. I argue that these changes in the technology call for a shift of focus from feminist critiques of GIS to feminist analyses of how GIS technologies are influencing gendered social relations. The third section explores these issues by discussing how GIS and communications technologies are affecting feminist geographies. This section examines the impacts of technologies in three areas: gendered identities, geographical dimensions of everyday life, and womens activism. I offer a selective summary of the literature that focuses on impacts on women and on the North American context. Effects on women are emphasized because that is the group I know best; however, the impacts on men and masculinities also deserve attention. Feminist Perspectives on Technology In the past three decades, gender and technology discourse has moved away from a pro-technology stance, in which technologies are viewed as tools for liberating women from toilsome daily tasks, and an opposing anti-technology stance in which technologies

perpetuate and reproduce gendered social relations (Faulkner 2001). Recent literature presents a more nuanced view that focuses on the social construction of technologies and their impacts on gendered social relations (Light 1995; Wacjman 2000). Such a view sees gender and technology as mutually constituted. It acknowledges that technologies can have both positive and negative impacts at the same time and that impacts vary among diverse social groups. As Wendy Faulkner writes, just as one cannot understand technology without reference to gender, one cannot understand gender without reference to technology (2001, 90). These new perspectives on gender and technology are rooted in feminist epistemology. Feminists highlight the importance of positionality the situatedness of knowledge and the lack of objectivity in science (Haraway 1991). There are many types of knowledge, each dependent on the position of the knower in relation to the subject of knowledge. People see information differently, pose different questions, and arrive at different conclusions. Reflexivity is another key concept in feminist epistemology. It refers to the ability to act in the world and to critically reflect on our actions and in ways that may reconstitute how we act and feel and even reshape the very nature of self identity (Ferguson 2003, 199). In feminist geography, it most often describes a critical self-awareness on the part of the researcher, a conscious, introspective effort to understand ones position in a research endeavour and to interrogate the uneven landscapes of power within which research is situated (Moss 1995; Rose 1997; Katz 1994; England 1994). It also involves efforts to give voice to the subjects of research through diverse forms of expression. It entails relations of support, trust, and empathy among researchers, analysts, and subjects (Cloke and others 2000). Technologies like GIS affect positionality and reflexivity by altering the positions and power of people and groups. The technologies privilege and convey certain types of knowledge and communicate particular types of images and messages (Sui and Goodchild 2001). At the same time, the technologies are themselves positioned in webs of social and economic relations that affect how the technologies develop and how, where, and by whom they are used. The Gendered Construction of GIS Is GIS a masculinist technology? Many GIS researchers would view this as an absurd question. How can a technology have a gender, and what intrinsic characteristics of the technology make it masculine in character? Critics, however, have been quick to draw parallels between masculinity and GIS. Susan Roberts and Richard Schein state, GIS is a gendered technology relying on scientific knowledge: it is a product of a

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scientific mind conceived as male and disembodied (1995, 189). Critics also stress the close ties between positivism and GIS (Lake 1993) and the fact that GIS is heavily used in masculinist areas of application such as the military (Smith 1992). There are many reasons why some authors have characterized GIS as masculinist. GIS is a detached observer, viewing its subjects from afar (Roberts and Schein 1995). GIS information is often remotely sensed, deriving from satellites, cameras, or government surveys. The uncritical reliance on secondary data makes many GIS applications appear masculinist. Along with its detached viewpoint, the technology is not highly reflexive. Until recently, most GIS applications severed the personal and social connections between GIS researchers and the subjects of GIS. The traditional data model used in GIS reinforces the distance between researchers and subjects. People are represented as spatial objects points on a map and their activity patterns as linear pathways. In GIS, the places where people live consist of assemblages of buildings, facilities, and environmental characteristics, devoid of meaning and place attachment. As many critics have argued, GIS relies on a Cartesian space that has little in common with the rich, multilayered social and perceptual spaces of everyday life (Sheppard and others 1999). The main areas of GIS application, particularly in the early years of technology development, reinforced the masculinist label. GIS developed in the unpopulated worlds of land management, national defence, and environmental assessment; people and their activities were largely absent from these early applications. For example, the GBF-DIME system, the US Census Bureaus first GIS, was developed primarily to facilitate collection and reporting of census data, rather than as a tool for understanding the census population. The strong ties between the military and GIS also give weight to the masculinist label. The military has been a major driver of technical innovations in GIS, and military operations increasingly rest on a GIS foundation (Smith 1992). For instance, GIS is at the heart of the Pentagons efforts to achieve virtual warfare. Although the history of GIS is bound up with masculinist endeavours, I agree with Mei-Po Kwan (2002c) and Nadine Schuurman (2002) that the technology is not inherently masculinist. In fact, some aspects of GIS are strongly feminist. GIS is a visual technology that relies on data exploration, layering, and visualization. There is no single best representation of GIS data; users interact with the technology to create their own representations. GIS is much more user driven and less tied to a rigid set of procedures than are many spatial analytic techniques. Furthermore, because the information in GIS is place based, GIS supports a form of grounded knowledge that is similar to feminist modes of understanding.

For women, knowledge is often rooted in experience and observation. GIS can be used to overlay and display information about places in a way that corresponds to womens ways of knowing. In Long Island, NY, women breast cancer activists embraced GIS in part because it supported their intuitive, grounded understandings of the connections between the disease and environmental hazards (McLafferty 2002). Recent theoretical and technical developments in GIS reveal an increasing feminization of the technology. I use the term feminization to refer to changes in the use and construction of GIS that make the technology more compatible with feminist understandings of research and practice. In other words, feminization does not mean increased numbers of women in the GIS field but, rather, broad changes in the technology and its application that are making it more feminist in character. Some of these changes have been propelled by feminist researchers and by critical GIS researchers drawing on feminist theories. Others are unintended consequences of technological innovations that have allied GIS more closely with multimedia technologies. Feminist geographers have proposed innovative changes in how GIS is used and structured. Kwan (2002b) describes the use of GIS for feminist visualization, a process of data exploration and discovery that takes advantage of the visual power and properties of GIS. GIS is used in mapping womens life paths in space and time, in understanding the geographical contexts of everyday life, in constructing cartographic narratives that capture the richness of womens lives, and in a host of other feminist research contexts. Kwans work opens up the possibilities for a much more reflexive GIS that strengthens the connections between the subjects of GIS and the people who view or analyse geographical information. It also calls upon feminist geographers to use GIS to explore the geographical contexts and constraints on womens daily lives. Examples of this type of feminist research are beginning to appear in the literature (Pavlovskaya 2002). Recent efforts to incorporate qualitative, multimedia information into GIS are also contributing to the growing feminization of the technology. Sketch maps and local knowledge have been brought into GIS to represent diverse understandings of space and place (Harris and Weiner 1998; Rocheleau, Thomas-Slayter, and Edmunds 1995). Researchers are linking oral history and diary information to people and places in GIS to give voice, literally, to research subjects (Matthews, Burton, and Detwiler 2001). Multimedia GIS is also gaining a foothold in humanities research. There are innovative efforts at bringing together historical maps, texts, and diaries in GIS to reveal the complex, multifaceted trajectories of change through time and space (Costa 2003; Ray 2003). These new developments capture the richness of people and

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places and give more voice to research subjects. Kwans research on the impact of 9/11 on Muslim women exemplifies this new reflexivity in GIS (Kwan 2002b). Using data from videos and travel diaries, she examines how Muslim women navigated the uneasy and hostile spaces of everyday life after 9/11. Women speak of their fears and experiences as they move through the GIS-based urban landscape. The result is a GIS that embodies its subjects. The feminization of GIS is also apparent in the heightened interest in reflexivity among critical GIS researchers. Reflexivity involves relations of support, trust, and empathy among researchers and researched. It entails a serious commitment to give back to the communities studied and to support their own efforts to enhance their social and material well-being (Cloke and others 2000; Moss 1995). Although much GIS research is not explicitly concerned with reflexivity, there is a growing emphasis, particularly among critical GIS researchers, on community participation and giving back. Rina Ghose (2001), for example, describes a communityuniversity partnership in the Metcalfe Park neighbourhood in Milwaukee that aims to provide equitable access to GIS among traditionally marginalized citizens (143). A community team received training in GIS and used GIS in exploring issues such as absentee landlords and geographic concentrations of abandoned properties. Results were used to push city agencies for improvements in sanitation and crime prevention services. There are many similar examples in the public participation GIS literature of working with communities to achieve progressive social change. Finally, a growing feminist influence is evident in the heightened awareness of how power relations shape the construction and use of GIS (Sheppard and others 1999). Feminists emphasize that power is situated and gendered. The development of GIS in a particular context both influences and is influenced by prevailing power relations. Critical GIS researchers have begun to interrogate the uneven landscapes of power in which GIS develop (Harris and Weiner 1998). Case studies show that GIS is often a force of empowerment and disempowerment at the same time and that GIS can be appropriated by powerful institutions and people (Elwood 2002). GIS research, in other words, has become much more feminist in character than it was a decade ago. The growth of the critical GIS literature, the heightened diversity of GIS applications, and the evolution of the technology into a multimedia tool all reflect an increased compatibility with feminist understandings and the increased role of GIS in feminist research. Despite these advances, however, it would be wrong to characterize GIS as completely feminist. Men still predominate in the discipline of GIS, both in faculty positions and in the workforce as a whole (Haggar 2000; Schuurman 2002),

and many areas of GIS, especially the core technical areas, remain untouched by feminism. Thus, although the influence of feminism on GIS has increased significantly, it is unevenly spread across GIS research and applications. The feminization of GIS is an ongoing and emerging process whose impacts are concentrated in a few key areas. Still, GIS technology has moved far beyond the detached, command-driven systems that predominated two decades ago. As GIS moves in these new directions, feminist understandings of GIS need to broaden their gaze from the technology itself to the impacts of geospatial technologies on gendered social relations. Feminist technology studies call for understanding the complex interrelations between gender and technology, and such insights are deeply relevant for GIS. Furthermore, as GIS becomes more closely allied with information and communications technologies, the impacts of GIS extend into many realms of everyday life (Sui and Goodchild 2001; Kwan and Weber 2003). Cell phones, tracking devices, vehicle navigation systems, and the Internet itself are geospatial technologies insofar as they can be used to locate things and to communicate and interact over space. Increasingly, GIS-type querying and analysis systems are embedded in these technologies, blurring the divisions between GIS and digital geospatial technologies. A feminist perspective on technology asks us to look beyond the hardware and software of GIS to consider the gendered geographical impacts of this broad suite of geospatial technologies. Increasingly present and embedded in everyday life, such technologies are changing womens social and spatial interactions. In the sections that follow I explore these impacts in three critical areas: gendered identities, geographies of everyday life, and womens activism. Geospatial Technologies and Gendered Identities Among the most important effects of emerging geospatial technologies are their impacts on gendered identities. New technologies convey images of and information about people and environments at a wide range of spatial scales, from the most intimate spaces of the home to the neighbourhood, regional, national, and international scales. Little is known about how the proliferation of geographical images and information is affecting peoples self-identities and their images of people and places elsewhere. Many of these images are filtered and created by institutions, corporations, and government agencies that control what people see and dont see. At the same time, the Internet provides a much more unrestricted and diverse source of geographical information (Light 1995). We need to know more about who uses what types of geographical information, where that information comes from, and how it is reshaping peoples understandings of themselves and the world around them.

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The concept of extensibility the ability to overcome the friction of distance (Janelle 1973) underpins our understanding of how technologies and the resulting processes of globalization are redefining personal identities. Personal boundaries in space and time, so crucial to the formation of identities, are becoming more fluid and dynamic in the context of globalization (Adams 1995). Geographic information from the Internet and other sources is critically important in redefining these personal boundaries. Kwan (2001) describes a process of cyber-spatial cognition whereby people gain access to information from the Internet. Access to information reflects the complex interplay between individual decisions, resources, and the constraints and opportunities present in the cyber-environment. Cyber-information, in turn, influences individual identities and behaviours. These impacts are likely to vary by gender because men and women have different patterns of Internet and technology use; they may seek out different kinds of geographical information, and they may respond differently to the information provided (Faulkner 2001; Chen, Boase, and Wellman 2002). Studies show that women are more likely than men to use the Internet and e-mail to communicate with friends and family, whereas men rely on the Internet more for news, entertainment, and business (Boneva and Kraut 2002). New technologies like GIS also affect gendered identities by altering the scale and scope of social networks. The Internet and e-mail enable people to keep in touch and acquire information over vast distances at low cost, thus breaking down some of the geographical barriers that once constrained interpersonal networks. From chat rooms to on-line support groups for cancer patients to buddy lists, people are relying more on personal contacts in virtual space. These cyber-social networks are an increasingly important source of social capital that connects in complex ways with more traditional placebased social networks (Hampton and Wellman 2001). Little is known about how these networks unfold; how they differ by class, gender, and ethnicity; and how they, in turn, affect identities (but see Boneva and Kraut 2002). A key area for feminist geographical inquiry is to understand how immigrant women draw upon these extensible cyber-social networks. Immigrants increasingly make use of complex, multi-scalar social networks as they negotiate the challenges of everyday life in a new place. If available, technology allows women to maintain contacts with friends and family in their place of origin while simultaneously developing place-based social networks in the area where they now live. But many barriers exist to immigrant womens use of technology, including cost, knowledge, availability, gender norms, and patriarchal relations in the household. Ranjana Chakrabarti (2005) is exploring these issues in relation to access to prenatal care by South Asian immigrant

women, a group that has low utilization of formal prenatal care services. Her preliminary results show that women increasingly obtain informal support and advice from friends and family back home in addition to people and resources in their local communities. The impacts of technology on gendered identities are mitigated by social, cultural, and economic forces that restrict access to technology and reinforce traditional gender roles. In a study of Internet use by Muslim women in Kuwait, Deborah Wheeler found that local cultural constraints make female Internet use a limited force for social change (2001, 206). Place-based cultural norms that defined womens role and place in society constrained the impacts of the Internet. Technology is situated within localized social, cultural, and political relations that influence how it is used, by whom, and for what. In addition to these localized norms and constraints, technology itself is often a source of information that reinforces traditional gendered identities. We find caricatures of women and men, stereotypes, degrading images views of people and places from every possible vantage point. We also find Internet sites constructed by and aimed at particular ethnic, social, or cultural groups that support cultural conceptions of gender. A matrimonial Web site for non-resident Indians in the United States reinforces the traditional construction of the ideal bride in terms of physical characteristics, caste, and social background (Adams and Ghose 2003). Thus, the Internet has seemingly contradictory possibilities. It has the potential to mould new gendered identities or to preserve identities in a static, culturally inscribed form. How these effects unfold depends critically on the types of information people seek out and find, how they perceive that information, and how it fits in the context of their own socially defined gender roles, images, and responsibilities. Ironically, global technologies are heightening the significance of place. Geospatial Technologies and Everyday Life GIS and related technologies are also affecting the geographical dimensions of everyday life. An increasing array of household tasks shopping, searching for a home, planning a vacation, finding a doctor can now be done remotely. As use of these opportunities grows, we are likely to see corresponding changes in peoples spatial interactions and spatial behaviours. The wellestablished gender division of labour in the household means that the impacts of geospatial technologies on everyday life will fall unevenly on women and men. Given womens larger share of household tasks, their lives are more likely than mens to be affected, although that gender division may also change. Geographers are just beginning to examine these impacts and their

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spatial implications. Kwan (2002a) notes that we may see two types of impacts. On the one hand, use of the Internet for shopping and other household chores may free up time for work and leisure activities (Kotkin 2001). Studies indicate that Internet shoppers make fewer shopping trips and spend more time at home. On the other hand, the Internet opens up a wide array of shopping opportunities and tools for evaluating those opportunities. People may spend more time making decisions, but less time in travel. In some cases, however, use of geographic information on the Internet increases geographical mobility as people travel longer distances to obtain the best opportunities. In health care, for example, Internet-based rankings of hospitals and doctors are causing some people to travel further to get high-quality medical treatment. These implications also differ by age, class, and other socio-economic divisions. The persistent digital divide means that in the emerging digital landscape, those who lack access to technologies lead increasingly isolated lives (Castells 1996). Geospatial technologies are also affecting employment decisions. People looking for work can use geographic search engines to identify job opportunities in particular places. Internet-based job postings open up a huge array of employment opportunities to job seekers in far-flung locations. Labour markets are increasingly global, although workers remain relatively bound to place. These trends intersect in complex ways with gender divisions at home and at work. Men and women use different strategies in finding employment. Women are more likely than men to centre their job search on the home, to search for work near home, and to use community connections in finding work (Hanson and Pratt 1995). Does this mean that women are less likely to use information technologies in finding employment? If so, then in the long run womens job opportunities will be more geographically restricted than mens, which will lead to heightened gender inequality in labour-market outcomes. Alternatively, access to information may open up new employment opportunities for women. Such impacts are particularly relevant for low-income women, who face a complex mix of social, economic, and geographical barriers to finding and keeping well-paid employment (Gilbert 1998). Technologies are also changing the location and nature of paid employment. Telecommuting is on the rise. More people work from home or as mobile workers shifting from place to place (Ellison 1999). A growing literature explores the gendered impacts and implications of these new forms of employment. In the United States, telecommuting is approximately equally split between men and women; however, women and men differ in their reasons for telecommuting and in the type and location of employment. Many women have no alternative but to work at home because of the low wages

available to them and the high cost of childcare. Others choose to work at home to accommodate domestic and childcare responsibilities (Gurstein 1991). In contrast, men are more likely to work at home in order to increase productivity, escape a corporate work environment, or free up time for leisure activities (Aitken and Carroll 2003). Regardless of the reasons, for both women and men, telecommuting leads to a blurring of the boundaries between home and work and to a transfer of business expenses from the employer to the worker (Salaff 2002). Another area where geographical technologies are penetrating everyday life is in surveillance and monitoring. Closed-circuit TV cameras, high-resolution satellite imagery, tracking devices, cell phones, and geographically linked databases connect people in new and complex ways (Curry 1998). Individual rights to privacy and confidentiality face a huge challenge as corporations, governments, and individuals collect and analyse an ever-increasing array of personal, geo-coded information (Brady and others 2001). Jerome Dobson and Peter Fisher (2003) describe the rise of geoslavery, a situation in which the master coercively or surreptitiously monitors or exerts control over the location of another individual (42). Although both men and women are affected, there may be gender differences in impact linked to broader gender divisions. Womens greater domestic responsibilities may make them more vulnerable than men to corporate tracking of purchases and expenditures and associated corporate marketing campaigns. For women in a borderline financial position, such information threatens efforts to establish a good credit rating or purchase a home. Interactions within households are also changing. Cell phones and pagers allow parents to keep in touch with hyper-mobile teenage children. Households are more connected in virtual space as their connections in physical space decline. Women often find themselves at the centre of these virtual networks, monitoring and coordinating household activities. At a more insidious level, tracking systems can be used to perpetuate gender norms and keep women in their place. Dobson and Fisher (2003) describe a frightening scenario in which family members or jealous partners use GPS to monitor womens movements and ensure their compliance with family or cultural norms. Women who violate cultural norms about spatial behaviour face punishment or even death. The authors argue that geoslavery is fundamentally a womens rights issue (50). As we begin to explore the impacts of surveillance and communications technologies, the key point is the connection between geospatial technologies and power, a point emphasized in the feminist literature on technology (Faulkner 2001). Geospatial technologies enable people, families, institutions, and corporations to exert power over other people by monitoring their movements and behaviours. The tools are situated within

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existing power relations that affect how, when, and by whom they are used and their long-term impacts. The same devices that make it easier for parents to keep in touch with children make wife-tracking possible. We need to know more about the types of power embedded in these technologies and their gendered impacts. Geospatial Technologies and Womens Activism The widespread availability of geographic information and tools for communicating and analysing that information are beginning to affect womens activism. Via the Internet one can access maps and data on health and health care, environmental quality, crime, social services, and demographics. There are also free Web-based GIS, such as LandView, to support rudimentary spatial analysis. Although an increasing number of studies examine the use of GIS in community-based development projects (Ghose 2001; Harris and Weiner 1998; Stonich 1998), little is known about the gendered impacts of community-based GIS. What we do know is that women activists are increasingly sophisticated in their use and understanding of geographic information and that such information is playing a more important role in their efforts (Gilbert and Masucci 2005). In the Long Island breast cancer example, geographic information underpinned womens quest for knowledge about the local breast cancer problem (McLafferty 2005). Women conducted their own surveys, created pin maps of breast cancer, and collaborated with researchers in using GIS to find out more about breast cancer and environmental contamination. Their efforts were so successful that they convinced the federal government to fund a $5 million Health-GIS for Long Island. The Long Island case is not an isolated example. Breast cancer activists in Cape Cod have created a space-time GIS to reconstruct womens historical environmental exposures (Paulu, Aschengrau, and Ozonoff 2002), and there are similar examples for issues such as crime, environmental justice, and housing. Communications technologies and geographic information are also important for coalition building. In Long Island, maps of breast cancer were crucial in generating support for the issue across diverse communities and in scaling up the breast cancer movement to the national scale. Many authors discuss how women activists can use the Internet to seek information, build public support, and network with activists in different places who are concerned about the same issue (Steinstra 2002). Women need to seize control of communications technologies and appropriate them for progressive purposes (Light 1995). These efforts are always constrained by gender-based power differentials as well as by those rooted in class, ethnicity, location, and other socio-political divisions.

Technologies can be both empowering and disempowering at the same time by inducing different types of change. Geospatial technologies have varying effects on empowerment, depending on how the technologies are structured and used, where, and by whom (Elwood 2001; Harris and Wiener 1998). In the Long Island case, women seized upon GIS and used it effectively to raise awareness of breast cancer in their communities and to mobilize funding for breast cancer research. However, as federal governments involvement in the issue increased, GIS was recast in biomedical terms that included restrictions on public access and an emphasis on research applications (McLafferty 2005). Womens activism influenced the construction of GIS and its use in exploring the associations between cancer and environmental contamination, while the changing construction of GIS, in turn, influenced womens activism. The situatedness of geographical technologies and their complex and often conflicting effects on womens activism demand further research attention (Gilbert and Masucci 2005). Conclusion Over the past decade, GIS technologies have become much more feminist in character. The multimedia construction of the technologies, the increasingly diverse range of GIS applications, the heightened attention to the positioning of GIS technologies in webs of social relations, and the growing awareness of reflexivity in GIS all signal closer ties between feminism and GIS. Some of these changes are a result of critical geographers advocating feminist approaches and embracing feminist epistemologies; others are made possible by technological changes that make GIS a multimedia tool and connect it with communications technologies; others reflect the diffusion of GIS into disciplines such as history, English, and fine arts. Regardless of its underlying causes, the feminization of GIS is reshaping our theoretical understandings of the technology and opening up exciting new areas of application. The proliferation of geospatial technologies throughout society and in many areas of everyday life opens up a new set of questions for feminist geographical inquiry. How are the technologies affecting the daily lives of men and women, and how are they transforming gendered social relations? I have identified three broad areas where the gendered impacts of geospatial technologies are clearly evident, but many other possibilities exist. In an increasingly GIS-enabled world, these topics call out for research attention. Acknowledgements I am grateful to the editors, Marianna Pavlovskaya, Mei-Po Kwan, and Francis Harvey, and to the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.

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Author Information Sara McLafferty is Professor of Geography at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Department of Geography, 229 Davenport Hall, 607 Mathews Avenue, Urbana, IL 61801-3671 USA. E-mail: smclaff@uiuc.edu. References
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cartographica
the international journal for geographic information and geovisualization