KEY POINTS:
An exam question asking students to provide a "feminist perspective" on geographical features has upset some, but academics say it is a valuable way of broadening students' thinking.
A parent of one student wrote to Newstalk ZB complaining about the question in an NCEA Level 3 Geography exam last week.
Five photographs of scenes ranging from a park to a city's central business district were shown, and students were asked to explain how each image could be be viewed from a feminist perspective.
"My daughter was dumbstruck," the parent wrote.
"She would never think about life this way, and felt really sorry for the guys in the class who would struggle to answer such a crap question.
"She told me she had never spouted so much bullshit. I am nearly speechless."
A caller to the radio station said the exam question was "another example of the world having gone mad".
Feminist geographer Dr Julie Cupples, of Canterbury University, said feminist geography had been around since the late 1970s.
It incorporated women's experience in a male-dominated area.
"It's really good if you can start to understand how gender shapes people's lives and our world in different ways," Dr Cupples said.
The suburbs could be highly gendered in that many women were at home with children "and the interesting stuff that is happening downtown they are excluded from".
Dr Wendy Lawson, head of the geography department at Canterbury University, said the exam question, while sophisticated, was "perfectly legitimate".
She suspected parents who regarded the question as politically correct were "taking a certain definition of feminism, and feminist, that is a colloquial understanding of that term - rather than an academic or intellectual understanding of that term".
The New Zealand Qualifications Authority said the question was in keeping with the standard for geography examination. Perspectives could include knowledge, practices and beliefs "such as Maori, indigenous, gender, scientific, environmental and post-colonial", said NZQA deputy chief executive Bali Haque.
WHAT SHE SEES, WHAT HE SEES
The Herald asked two staff reporters to give a male and a female perspective of the archive picture above of Hagley Park and the Christchurch CBD:
Alanah May Eriksen
As a woman, I feel this picture represents the hustle and bustle of city life.
When I first look at the image I don't notice Hagley Park in the foreground but the high-rises which depict shopping, restaurants and theatres - activities that are often associated with being feminine.
Hagley Park, however, represents rugby and cricket - sports with a largely male following.
David Eames
If I fully understood what a gender perspective was, I might comment on the distinctly masculine skywards thrusting of the buildings of the CBD.
To me, however, downtown means shopping. That's not very masculine.
But the fertile, leafy, grounds of Hagley Park - which might, by others, be considered feminine - suggest sports such as rugby and cricket.
