ABSTRACT
This chapter considers that the implications of gender in the study of geography are at least as important as the implications of any other social or economic factor which transforms society and space. It explores the term gender' to refer to socially created distinctions between femininity and masculinity, while the term sex' is used to refer to biological differences between men and women. The chapter introduces the idea of feminist geography a geography which explicitly takes into account the socially created gender structure of society; and in which a commitment both towards the alleviation of gender inequality in the short term and towards its removal, through social change towards real equality, in the longer term, is expressed. In 1977, the Employment Protection Act came into force, giving women the legal right, given two years' full-time service, to return to their job after having a baby.
