My friend and former colleague Janet Townsend, who has died aged 79, was a pioneer in gender and development who achieved many firsts in her career. She initiated the first course on geography and gender to be taught in the UK, at Durham University in 1986; co-edited Geography of Gender in the Third World, the first book on the subject, in 1987; and was a member of the steering committee of the geography and gender commission of the International Geographical Union from 2004 to 2008.
Janet’s postdoctoral research in the 1970s was with pioneers seeking to settle the rainforests, and utilised quantitative survey methodology. From there, and coinciding with a shift towards critical, qualitative research in the discipline, she became a feminist geographer and worked primarily with women pioneers. The resultant collaborative monograph, Women’s Voices from the Rainforest (1995), was groundbreaking in challenging international development policy and advocating for the inclusion of local people in seeking solutions to environmental problems. Janet returned to Latin America, principally Colombia, Mexico and Brazil, for many years to undertake research, often involving arduous fieldwork. I first met her at a feminist geography conference session in the mid-1990s.
