KELLI HUGGIN S
WOMEN ON THE MAP MANY CATSKILLS TOWNS AND LANDMARKS WERE NAMED AFTER INFLUENTIAL FIGURES. BUT WHERE ARE THE WOMEN? In the mid-2010s, a series of
who
researchers around the world
settled,
began
discovered, or
were
colonized, otherwise
for
influential in them. Sexism and
their efforts to document how
the bias of those shaping our
few places are named for women
history have effectively erased the
compared to those named for
contributions of many who are
men. A team of engineers with
not men. In many cases, when a
Mapbox released a study in 2015
place is named after a woman, it
showing that in seven cities
is someone given the honor due
spanning
to their relationship to a man,
making
headlines
multiple
continents,
only 27.5% of streets bore women’s
typically a mother or wife.
names. That same year, an activist group in Paris renamed 60 streets
We don’t have data on the
in protest of the fact that only
breakdown of place name origins
2.6% of city streets were named
in the Catskills. A crowdsourced
for women (versus 31% for men).
list on Catskill Center social media
Movements have cropped up on
brought up quite a few options,
college and university campuses
but if we had asked for places
to examine namesakes of dorm
named for men or for geographic
and classroom buildings. Rebecca
features, we suspect there might
Solnit and Joshua Jelly-Schapiro’s
have been more. In the following
2016 Nonstop Metropolis: A New York
list, we have highlighted some
City Atlas includes a map imagining
of these local places named for
every
renamed
women. This is not intended to be
for a woman.This disparity has
an exhaustive list, but instead to
historical roots, of course. Places
show the variety in these name
are often named for the people
origins.
12
subway
stop
2021 SENSE OF PLACE
