Hearing Gender: Re-thinking Gender, Sound and Public Space Through a Female Soundwalk Project and a Sound Installation in Hong Kong

Over the past three years, we conducted two rounds of soundwalks with Chinese female immigrants in Hong Kong’s public spaces. These soundwalks, designed to guide participants through diverse public spaces, facilitated deep listening, creative recording, and reflective practices. By documenting their auditory experiences and personal reflections, we observed the manifestation of gendered perceptions of safety, belonging, and identity within urban environments. Our analysis reveals how these gendered auditory experiences correlate with theories of gender performativity (Butler, 1990) and spatial dynamics (Massey, 2013). These interactions highlight the influence of gender on auditory perceptions in public spaces, underscoring the socially constructed nature of both gender and space. Building on these insights, we developed an interactive sound installation that aims to consider gender in auditory experiences. This installation processes all input sounds to produce “gender- reflective” outputs, enabling participants to hear each other’s voices devoid of visual cues. This design compels the audience to engage with the content of speech rather than traditional auditory markers such as pitch or timbre, fostering a critical re-examination of the relationship between gender and sound. Our findings amplify the sounds of migrant women and challenge conventional, patriarchal frameworks within sound studies. By integrating participants’ narratives and soundscapes, this project advocates for more inclusive urban planning and policies that acknowledge the auditory dimension of women’s lived experiences, echoing the call for situated knowledge in feminist geography (Haraway, 1988).