59

Though still limited as far as geography is concerned, the development of gender studies is an invitation to take into account the key role of social categories determined by sex belonging and sexual orientations when studying the production of geographical space. The author of this essay sees gender as a relation of domination linking groups that are improperly and systematically defined by their sexes. His main purpose is to bridge the gap between gender theories and social geography by proposing operating tools (such as life-space and lived space, territoriality and territory, place and network ...) which he used in a study based on a sample of the Bordeaux female population. The results of this study are presented in the essay: women build up their own lived cities according to gender values, under the influence of a both male and familial social, urban and political order; in these lived cities they delineate their territories, networks and places (all of them very diversified), encircling them with “invisible walls”.