Teaching gender and geography: the case of the Netherlands

Feminist geography teaching in universities in the Netherlands originated 30 years ago in an academic context that counteracted this new development for ideological reasons. Nowadays, the neoliberal conditions of the market have replaced the conservative ideology that prevailed 30 years ago. Feminist geography is supported as far as it returns money and is therefore dependent on the number of students' enrolments. Feminist geographers have two different strategies in order to deal with this neoliberal context: a strategy of separation (i.e. teaching separate gender courses) and a strategy of integration (i.e. integrating gender issues and feminist pedagogic practices into the core courses). This report on the history of gender teaching in geography departments in the Netherlands concludes that feminist geography became successful as a result of flexible balancing of the two strategies