RGS Internship - Day 1 and 2

For my first two days, I worked with a Cambridge graduate (Sarah) who was doing a Doctor's thesis (studentship) on expeditions supported by the Royal Geographical Society. I was in charge of transcribing the expeditions and surveys that were received by the Society from the year 1970 and 1971.

My task was to input the expedition name, date, nomenclature and compile a detailed note file on each application, including the name of the leader, the duration, mission (e.g. Glaciology, meteorology  ornithology (which I now know is the study of birds), ecology and even medical geography) and also state whether the expedition was granted loans or equipment by the RGS.

It was interesting to read about all the proposed expeditions, albeit entering them into a database was a bit repetitive. The most interesting things I learned were about some of the topics themselves - for example, one expedition investigated tree-lines, a concept that I have not heard of before. The term 'tree line' meant the natural borders where trees of one kind stop growing and spreading.

Other interesting research topics include medical geography and the research of disease, how they spread and how the geography of the land affects the disease. I clearly remember several investigations that aimed to study specific bacteria or pathogens in Africa or Asia. I want to look into this area in more detail - medical geography is an entire field in itself!

Most expeditions were to Norway or Iceland - not surprising as there's most natural landscapes present in Iceland. Volcanoes mean one can study lava flows or the formation of particular rocks. Rivers means a study of the hydrology and Hjolstrom's Curve. Glaciers also means one can look at the frozen land and "cold deserts".

Sarah was looking at the expeditions with women in - specifically which ones included women and where did these go. I had to put a star next to the expeditions featuring a female, and often it was hard to detect just from the archives - I had to read between the lines to find a "wife" or a "female" student, or detect a female name. I asked Sarah what she thought the trend would be and she said that we should find a rise in female numbers as the feminist movement (both 1 and 2) gained power during the 1960s and 1970s. It seemed that around 1/4 of expeditions had women in them, sometimes less.

Time for me to ask more questions - Why look at women but not look at men - is there something fundamentally missing from all women studies / gender studies ? Is looking at the records even accurate because it's so hard to tell whether there's a female involved ? What exactly does women tell you about society's values then and the human geography concepts it shows?

Is Geography a patriarchal subject ?