Abstract:

Recent research on feminist geography has focused on the human body's micro-geography, identity, and symbolic space. This study primarily concerns the logic of female behavior in small-scale consumption spaces, interpreting such a space's cultural significance and social construction from a gender perspective, analyzing its symbolic significance to feminism, and exploring the power and control that result from such behavior. This study focuses on the praxis and logic of women's lives from a feminist perspective. Starting from a broad perspective of group consumption, including women's spatial perception and cultural experience, it conducts an empirical investigation into the typical attributes of this consumption space and the attributes of space, gender, and power in relationships determined by gender factors. In conclusion, the characteristics of a gender-constructed model of human-earth interaction are summarized. The study helps make good the deficiency of empirical research on small-scale consumption spaces and deepens the research on identity representation and female behavior's cultural connotations in spatial practice. The construction of the consumption space is not only the result of a general social reproduction, but is also the product of gender reproduction. Research on the consumption space from a gender perspective could generate ideas and choices for constructing and reshaping a new public space in the current urban renewal environment. Simultaneously, it is beneficial to women's social relationship status and society's harmonious development. The research results suggest that a gender-aware consumer space could provide a micro-ecosystem for women to participate in an urban setting and call to mind feminist awakening and the practice of women's rights. However, in reality, socially and culturally, women are still disciplined and controlled by males. The behavior of modern women in the consumption space follows the traditional course of role orientation. Women's activities are mainly concentrated in a consumption-driven domestic environment. Their involvement in public space does not significantly change their gender roles or the gender division of labor and their domestic responsibilities. Typical observable discriminatory gender relationships and status are constructed and reproduced in the consumption space, actively confining women to inequality. Therefore, space and gender represent an inseparable dichotomy, and consumption spaces re-enact these unequal gender power relations, reflecting the dominant and controlling relationship between men and women in geographical space.

Key words: feminist geography, consumption space, shopping center, gender segregation, gender difference, gender gaze