Putting Women in Place: Feminist Geographers Make Sense of the World [1° ed.] 1572306688, 9781572306684

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Citation preview

PUTTING WOMEN IN PLACE Feminist Geographers Make Sense of the World

Mona Domosh J oni Seager

THE GUILFORD PRESS

New York

London

© 2001 The Guilford Press A Division of Guilford Publications, Inc. 72 Spring Street, New York, NY 10012 www.guilford.com

All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced, translated, stored in a re­ trieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, elec­ tronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher. Printed in the United States of America This book is printed on acid-free paper. Last digit is print number: 9 8 7 6 5 4 3

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Domosh, Mona, 1957Putting women in place: feminist geographers make sense of the world I Mona Domosh, Joni Seager. p. em. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 1-57230-668-8 (pbk.) 1. Women-Social conditions. 2. Sex role-History. 3. Spatial behavior-History. 4. Feminist geography. I. Seager,Joni. II. Title. HQ1150 .D65 2001 305.42-dc21 2001023878

To our parents, with love Natalie Frankel Domosh Stanley Domosh Joan Seager

CONTENTS

FIGURES AND TABLES

IX

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

XIII

PREFACE

XIX

Chapter 1

1

HOME

The Separation of Spheres 2 At Home with the Victorians 6 Reading the Parlor 8, Cleaning the Parlor 12 Tastemakers and Home Engineering 14 Social Engineering 20 The Suburban Home 24 The Postmodem Home 28 Home-Work Relations 30

Chapter 2

35

WOMEN AT WORK

What Is Work? 38 What Counts? 41 Footloose Factories and Nimble Fingers: The New Industrial Order Homework 53 The Return of the Sweatshop 56 Between the Sticky Floor and the Glass Ceiling 57 Gender in the Workplace 58 Mapping the Terrain of Poverty 63

47

VII

Con ten t s

VIII

Chapter 3

T HE CITY

67

69 Masculine City, Feminine Country? The Early Modern City 72 The Industrial City 76 Working Women 82, Shopping Women 88, Regulating Women 93 The Modern City 95 The Postmodern City 99 Crime and Safety 99, Homelessness 100, Gentrification 101, Diverse Suburbs 104, The Culture of Shopping 105, Duumtuum 107

Chapter 4

ON T HE MOVE

110

The Body in Space 110 Getting Around: First Principles 113 Keeping Women in Their Place 115 Roaming and "Homing" 118 Breaking the Bonds of Space and Sex 122 Auto-masculinity 123 Global Migration 129 Refugees 134 The Sex Trade 136

Chapter 5

NATIONS AND EM PIRES

140

Victorian Lady Travelers 143 Women and Colonial Space 146 Domestic Space on the Frontier 147, Domestic Space in the Colonies 150, Bringing the Imperial Home 152 Feminism and Imperialism 156 Gender and Nationalism 160 Women in Nationalist Movements 168 Nationalisms and Sexualities 170

Chapter 6

T HE ENVIRONMENT

174

Mothers and Other Forces of Nature 174 Control 179 Encounters in the Environment 184 Studying Nature 186 Environmental Perception 188 Environmental Activism and Ecofeminism 188 REFERENCES

1%

INDEX

209

ABOUT T HE AUT HORS

216

FIGURES AND TABLES

FIGURES

FIGUREP.1.

Baroque sideboard from the New York Exhibition, 1853-1854.

FIGUREP.2.

Diagram of a prototype Navajo hogan.

XX

XXI

A medieval houseplan.

3

FIGURE1.2.

King's Square in Soe Hoe (now Soho Square), London, early eighteenth century.

6

FIGURE1.3.

Parlor view of a New York dwelling house.

9

FIGURE1.1.

Trade card for the Mason & Hamlin Organ Co., c. 1890.

10

FIGURE1.5.

Part of a parlor suite, from the Phoenix Furniture Company catalog, c. 1878.

11

FIGURE1.6.

Diagrams of unplanned and planned cleaning "orders," from Christine Frederick's Household Engineering, 1919.

16

FIGURE1.7.

Victorian bathroom interior, from J. L. Mott Iron Works illustrated catalog, 1888.

17

FIGURE1.8.

"Modern" bathroom fixtures, from Standard Sanitary Manufacturing Co., 1905.

17

FIGURE1.9.

A woman hanging wallpaper, from the Montgomery Ward catalog, 1910.

19

FIGURE1.4.

FIGURE1.10. Photograph of Hull House, c. 1905-1910.

21 IX

Figures a n d Tables

x

FIGURE1.11. M. P. Wolffs plan for a public kitchen, 1884.

23

FIGURE1.13. Photograph of a postmodem home in Hanover,

28

Cartoon of census enumeration.

43

Photograph of women on the assembly line.

50

Brochure about women in the global economy.

51

1910 Riis photographs of home-based production.

53

FIGURE3.1.

The ideal, planned Renaissance city of Palma Nuova, designed by Vitruvius.

70

FIGURE 3.2.

A 1569 depiction of Paris.

71

View inside a London coffeehouse, c. 1650.

75

FIGURE 3.4.

An etching of a woman walking in Comhill, by W. Hollar, 1643.

77

FIGURE3.5.

View of New York City, c. 1872.

78

FIGURE3.6.

A Winslow Homer drawing, The Drive in Central Park, New York, September, 1860, that appeared in Harper 's Weekly.

80

FIGURE3.7.

Photograph ofT. E. Fitzgerald's Bar, 1912.

81

A lithograph of a dressmaker, c. 1860.

82

Photograph of women working in a laundry room, 1902.

83

FIGURE1.12. Advertisement for Levittown houses, 1950.

New Hampshire.

FIGURE 2.1. FIGURE2.2. FIGURE2.3. FIGURE 2.4.

FIGURE3.3.

FIGURE3.8. FIGURE3.9.

26

FIGURE3.1 0. Photograph of the bargain counter at Siegal Cooper

85

FIGURE3.11. Photograph of women parading along the Boardwalk,

87

FIGURE3.12. Exterior view of Stewart's 1851 department store

90

FIGURE3.13. Inside view of Stewart's 1862 department store.

91

Department Store, New York City, showing the women shoppers and the women clerks. Coney Island, c. 1897.

in New York City.

FIGURE3.14. Lithograph of a woman "walking the gauntlet"

92

FIGURE3.15. The title page of Good Homes Make Contented

97

FIGURE3.16. Aerial view of a portion of Levittown, Long Island,

97

on Broadway.

Workers, 1919.

New York, 1947.

FIGURE 3.17.

Photograph of a festival in the "Village" of Manchester, England.

FIGURE3.18. View of the interior of the Fashion Mall,

Plantation, Florida.

103 106

F igures a n d Tables

xi

"Our Best Society."

112

Photograph of a woman with a baby carriage.

113

Nineteenth-century footbinding in New York.

116

Pleasure Park.

119

Road map image of a woman driver.

124

Map of global women migrants.

13 1

FIGURE4.7.

Map of the global sex trade.

137

FIGURE5.1.

Bird's-eye view of the World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago, 1893.

141

FIGURE5.2.

View of the Woman's Building at the 1893 Chicago Exposition.

141

FIGURE5.3.

Photographs of Amelia and Lena Brennon in front of their sod homes in North Dakota, c. late nineteenth century.

148

FIGURE5.4.

Photograph of Mr. and Mrs. David Hilton and their children, Custer County, Nebraska, 1887.

149

FIGURE5.5.

The MacNab family, posed in front of their bungalow in the hill station of Ootacamund in Madras, India, c. 1910.

151

FIGURE 5.6.

Victorian trade cards for Kirk soap.

154

FIGURE5.7.

A depiction of a Native American-themed "historical comer," from The Decorator and Furnisher, 1898.

155

FIGURE5.8.

Photograph of Annette Ackroyd with her pupils in India, 1875.

157

FIGURE5.9.

Family of seven Afrikaners on and around a covered wagon, reenacting the Great Trek, 1938.

163

FIGURE5.10.

Photograph of Billy Byrne Memorial Statue, County Wicklow, Ireland.

165

FIGURE4.1. FIGURE 4.2. FIGURE4.3. FIGURE4.4. FIGURE4.5. FIGURE4.6.

FIGURE5.11. Cradling Wheat by Thomas Hart Benton, 1938. FIGURE6.1. FIGURE6.2. FIGURE6.3.

167

Mother Earth.

178

Advertising Images.

180

Earth First! cartoon.

190

Figures a n d Tables

XII

TAB LE S Real Work versus Census-Defined "Work"

44

Workday of a Rural Woman, Eastern Uganda

46

TABLE2.3.

Time Use of Children in Rural Areas: Number of Hours Spent per Day in Different Activities

47

TABLE2.4.

Women's Average Wages in Manufacturing as Percentage of Men's, 1970, 1980, and 1990

59

TABLE2.5.

Home Ownership Rates in the United States, 1993: Percentage Who Own Their Own Homes

60

TABLE2.6.

The Costs of Labor Market Segregation, Worcester (Massachusetts) Case Study

60

TABLE2.7.

U.S. Poverty Rates by Residential Location, 1993

64

U.S. Poverty Rates by Race and Gender, 1999

65

TABLE2.1. TABLE2.2.

TABLE2.8. TABLE4.1. TABLE4.2. TABLE4.3. TABLE4.4.

Gender Differences in Driving

126

Global Maid Trade: Average Annual Migration

130

Per Capita Income (U.S.$), Early 1990s

132

Women Refugees as a Percentage of All Refugees in Asylum Countries, 1995

135

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We owe thanks to many friends for their support through the

various stages of writing this book. In particular, we want to thank Julie Abraham, Gilda Bruckman, Ellen Cooney, Walter Delaney, Madeline Drexler, E. ]. Graff, Gail Hollander, Barbara Hutchings, Melissa Hyams, Amy Lang, JoBeth Mertens, Rod Neumann, Judy Wachs, and Ellen Winchester, for their friendship, companionship, and comic relief. We also want to recognize and thank colleagues who provided institutional assistance at the University of Vermont, Florida Atlantic University, and Dartmouth College, particularly Mary McBride, Joan Smith, Charles White, Kelly White, and Richard Wright. Thank you to our friends in the Geography and Women's Studies departments at the University of Vermont and Dartmouth College for their on­ going intellectual and collegial support. Our colleagues in the Associ­ ation of American Geographers' feminist caucus ("Geographical Perspectives on Women") provide a national and international net­ work of intellectual camaraderie, support, and sense of shared pur­ pose essential for a work of this kind. We intend this book to be a testament to the intellectual liveliness of this network of feminist scholars; we hope they are not disappointed. Anna McCall-Taylor was invaluable as our research assistant, tracking down prints, photos, maps, and permissions from across the globe. Without her persistence and creativity we would never have been able to include such a wide array of photographs and images. We are forever grateful. XIII

XIV

Acknowledgme n t s

Our thanks to the tireless production team at the Guilford Press and to our editor Peter Wissoker. The anonymous reviewers who read the manuscript in various stages made important and useful comments and suggestions. We thank them for their guidance and direction. Some of the research for this book was supported with funds from the National Science Foundation, grants 942205 1 and 99 1 1232. We also want to acknowledge the often unspoken but nonethe­ less important influences of those brave women who first dared to mention gender, feminism, and geography in the same breath. Their experiences, their scholarship, and their audacity created what we to­ day call feminist geography. We would like to note, in particular, Mildred Berman, an unheralded feminist pioneer, who is much missed. And to Frank and to Cynthia, with thanks for their love and endurance.

We gratefully acknowledge permission to reproduce the following il­ lustrations from their original sources as detailed below:

Figure P.l: Baroque sideboard from the New York Exhibition, 1853-1854. From The World of Science, Art, and Industry, illustratedfrom examples in the New York Exhibition, 1853-1854 edited by Professor B. Silliman, Jr. and C. R. Godrich Esq., aided by several scientific and literary men (1854). By courtesy of the Dartmouth College Library. Figure P.2: Diagram of a prototype Navajo hogan. From Native American Achitecture by Peter Nabokov and Robert Easton. Copyright 1989 by Peter Nabokov and Robert Easton. Used by permission of Oxford University Press, Inc. Figure 1.1: A medieval houseplan. From The Village and House in the Middle Ages by Jean Chapelot and Robert Fossier and translated by Henry Cleere. Copyright 1985. Reproduced by permission of Chrysalis Books, Ltd. Figure 1.2: King's Square in Soe Hoe (now Soho Square), London, early eighteenth century. Reproduced by courtesy of the Westminster City Archives Center. Figure 1.3: Parlor view of a New York dwelling house from Gleason's Pictorial Drawing-Room Companion (1854). By courtesy of the Dartmouth College Li­ brary. Figure 1.4: Trade card for the Mason & Hamlin Organ Co., c. 1890. By cour­ tesy of The Winterthur Library: Joseph Downs Collection of Manuscripts and Printed Ephemera. Figure 1.5: Part of a parlor suite, from thePhoenix Furniture Company cata­ log, c. 1878. From Grand Rapids Public Library Furniture Catalog Collec-

Acknowledgme n t s

XV

tion (232) Lon M. Neely, with Phoenix Furniture Co., Grand Rapids, Mich. [catalog], ca. 1878. By courtesy of the Local History Department, Grand Rapids Public Library, Grand Rapids, MI. Figure 1.6: Diagrams of unplanned and planned cleaning "orders," from Christine Frederick's Household Engineering, 1919. Originally published by the American School of Home Economics, Chicago, IL. Figure 1. 7: Victorian bathroom interior, from J. L. Mott Iron Works illus­ trated catalog, 1888. From Mott's Illustrated Catalog of Victorian Plumbing Fix­ tures for Bathrooms and Kitchens by The J. L. Mott Iron Works (1987). Reproduced by permission of Dover Publications, Inc. Figure 1.8: "Modem" bathroom fixtures, from Standard Sanitary Manufac­ turing Co., 1905. Reprinted with permission of American Standard, Inc. Figure 1.9: A woman hanging wallpaper, from the Montgomery Ward catalog, 1910. From Montgomery Ward's, Wallpaper at Wholesale Prices: Newest Styles for 1910 (1910). Reproduced by permission of the Montgomery Ward's. Figure 1.10: Photograph of Hull House, c. 1905-1910. Reproduced by per­ mission of the Chicago Historical Society and Barnes-Crosby, negative no. ICHi-19288. Figure 1.11: M.P. Wolffs plan for a public kitchen, 1884. From M. P. Wolff, plan for a public kitchen, 1884. Figure 1.12: Advertisement for Levittown houses, 1950. Reproduced by courtesy of Levittown Historical Society and by permission of Levitt and Sons. Figure 2.1: Cartoon of census enumeration. Cartoon by Terry Hirst, com­ missioned by the International Centre for Research in Agroforestry for Agro­ forestry Today, Vol. 1, No. 2. Reproduced by permission of Terry Hirst, Agroforestry Today. Figure 2.2: Photograph of women on the assembly line. Reproduced by courtesy of Gary Massoni/ AFSC. Figure 2.3: Brochure about women in the global economy. Brochure repro­ duced by courtesy of Press for Change. Figure 2.4: 1910 Riis photographs of home-based production. National Con­ sumers' League, Finishing Pants Photograph c. 1900 and Organized Charity. Family Making Artifu;ial Flowers Photograph, c. 1910 from The Jacob A. Riis Collection, Museum of the City of New York 90.13. 3.173 and 90.13. 4.64. Table 2.1: Real Work versus Census-Defined "Work. " Reprinted from "What Counts? Critical Analysis of Statistical Indicators" by Janice Monk in Encompassing Gender: Integrating International Studies and Women's Studies, ed­ ited by Mary M. Lay,Janice Monk, and Deborah S. Rosenfelt, New York: The FeministPress. Copyright 2001 by Janice Monk. Reproduced by permission of The Feminist Press, wwwjeministpress.org.

XVI

Acknowled gments

Table 2.2: Workday of a Rural Woman, Eastern Uganda. Reprinted from "Agricultural Production and Women's Time Budgets in Uganda" by Victo­ ria Mwaka in Different Places, Different Voices, edited by Janet Henshall Momsen and Vivian Kinnaird, New York: Routledge, 1993. Reproduced by permission of Routledge and the editors. Figure 3.1: The ideal, planned Renaissance city of Palma Nuova, designed by Vitruvius. From Civitates Orbis Terrarum by Georg Braun and Franz Hogenberg, originally published between 1572 and 1618. Photo courtesy of Edward E. Ayer Collection, The Newberry Library, Chicago, IL. Figure 3.2: A 1569 depiction of Paris. From Civitates Orbis Terrarum by Georg Braun and Franz Hogenberg, originally published between 1572 and 1618. Photo courtesy of Edward E. Ayer Collection, The Newberry Library, Chicago, IL. Figure 3.3: View inside a London coffeehouse, c. 1650. Detail from A Lon· don Coffee-House c. 1705, Anon. Copyright the British Museum. Reproduced by permission of the British Museum. Figure 3.4: An etching of a woman walking in Cornhill, by W. Hollar, 1643. Copyright the British Museum. Reproduced by permission of the British Museum. Figure 3.6: A Winslow Homer drawing, The Drive in Central Park, New York, September, 1860. From Harper's Weekly: A journal of Civilization, Vol. IV (1860). By courtesy of the Dartmouth College Library. Figure 3. 7: Photograph of T. E. Fitzgerald's bar, 1912. T. E. Fitzgerald's Bar photograph, 1912 from the Museum of the City of New York, The Byron Collection. Figure 3. 9: Photograph of women working in a laundry room, 1902. Doum­ town Club, Laundry Room photograph, 1902 from the Museum of the City of New York, The Byron Collection. Figure 3.10: Photograph of the bargain counter at Siegal Cooper Depart­ ment Store, New York City. Siegel Cooper Company Bargain Counter photo­ graph, c. 1897 from the Museum of the City of New York, The Byron Collection. Figure 3.11: Photograph of women parading along the Boardwalk, Coney Is­ land, c. 1897. The Boardwalk, Coney Island photograph, c. 1897 from the Mu­ seum of the City of New York, The Byron Collection. Figure 3.12: Exterior view of Stewart's 1851 department store in New York City. Christmas Parade of the Expressmen of NY engraving by J. A. Bogart. Re­ produced by permission from the Collection of the New-York Historical So­ ciety, negative no. 41435. Figure 3.13: Inside view of Stewart's 1862 department store. A. T. Stewart's Astor Place Store, c. 1880s, interior, engraving by unidentified artist. Repro­ duced by permission from the Collection of the New-York Historical Soci­ ety, negative no. 70132.

Acknowledgme nts

XVII

Figure 3.14: Lithograph of a woman "walking the gauntlet" on Broadway. Running the Gauntlet, drawn by J. N. Hyde, from Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, May 16, 1874. Reproduced by permission from the Collection of the New-York Historical Society, negative no. 74255. Figure 3.15: The title page of Good Homes Make Contented Workers, 1919. Ti­ tle page, Good Homes Make Contented Workers, Industrial Housing Associates, 1919. Figure 3.16: Aerial view of a portion of Levittown, Long Island, New York, 1947. Photo courtesy of Levittown Public Library. Figure 3.1 7: Photograph of a festival in the "Village" of Manchester, Eng­ land. Copyright News Team International Ltd. Figure 4.1: "Our Best Society. " Our Best Society-A Scene on Fifth Avenue, from New York Illustrated News ,january 31, 1863. Reproduced by permission from the Collection of the New-York Historical Society, negative no. 70510. Figure 4.2: Photograph of a woman with a baby carriage. From the photo se­ ries "Urban Obstacle Course" in Making Space: Women and the Man·Made En· vironment by MATRIX, London: PlutoPress. Copyright 1984 byPlutoPress. Reproduced by permission of Pluto Press. Figure 4.4: Pleasure Park. Kake Pleasure Park by Tom of Finland, c. 19691970. Courtesy of the Tom of Finland Foundation, Los Angeles. Figure 4.5: Road map image of a woman driver. Road map cover from the John Margolies Collection. Figure 4.6: Map of global women migrants. From The State of Women in the World Atlas, New Edition by Joni Seager (1997). Reproduced by permission of Myriad Editions andjoni Seager. Figure 4. 7: Map of the global sex trade. From The State of Women in the World Atlas, New Edition by Joni Seager (1997). Reproduced by permission of Myr­ iad Editions andjoni Seager. Figure 5.3: Photographs of Amelia and Lena Brennon in front of their sod homes in North Dakota. From Land in Her Own Name by H. Elaine Lindgren. Reproduced by permission of the North Dakota Institute for Regional Studies and University Archives. Figure 5.4: Photograph of Mr. and Mrs. David Hilton and their children, Custer County, Nebraska, 1887. Reproduced by permission of the Nebraska State Historical Society, Solomon D. Butcher Collection. Figure 5.5: The MacNab family, posed in front of their bungalow in the hill station of Ootacamund in Madras, India, c. 1910. Reproduced by permis­ sion of The British Library, MACNAB 752/4 No. 58. Figure 5. 7: A depiction of a Native American-themed "historical comer. " From The Decorator and Furnisher, Vol. 31 (1898). By courtesy of the Library of Congress.

XVIII

Acknowledgments

Figure 5.8: Photograph of Annette Ackroyd with her pupils in India, 1875. Reproduced by permission of The British Library, MSS EUR C 176/244. Figure 5.9: Family of seven Mrikaners on and around a covered wagon. From Gedenboek, Eeufees: 1838-1939 by H. J. Klopper, originally published by Cape Town: NasionalePers (1940). Reproduced by courtesy of Tafelberg Publishers. Figure 5.10: Photograph of Billy Byrne Memorial Statue, County Wicklow, Ireland. Reproduced by courtesy of the National Library of Ireland, Law­ rence Collection, Cab3959. Figure 5.11: Cradling Wheat by Thomas Hart Benton, 1938. Reproduced by courtesy of The Saint Louis Art Museum, Museum Purchase.

PREFACE

S

ometimes the most everyday and seemingly unimportant facets of our lives can turn out to be profound and provocative. The way we ar­ range our furniture, for example, tells a lot about our economic situ­ ation, our ideas of good taste, perhaps even our ethnic or national identity. It can also tell us about gender relationships. We see this in typical middle-class homes in the United States, where the garage, basement, and barbecue pit tend to be men's spaces, while the kitchen and living room are women's domains. In Victorian times, the dining room was thought to be a masculine space: fine dining was associated with meat eating and, by implication, with the violence of the hunt. Victorian sideboards, such as the one shown in Figure P.1, were decorated with the depictions of dead animals, while the pic­ tures that hung on dining room walls often celebrated the killings. In some other cultures around the world, domestic spaces are more formally divided between women and men. In traditional wealthy Muslim homes in Iran, for example, the female area of the home is located in the rear, near the family living room, while the male area is located in the more public areas of the home close to the entrance. The traditional circular home of the Navajo in the U.S. Southwest, the hogan, is divided into male and female areas, both lived-in and spiritual (Figure P.2). Thus, the floor represents the fe­ male earth, while the roof symbolizes the male sky. Women occupy the south side of the hogan, while the men occupy the north side. Examining how people organize their most everyday spaces, XIX

Preface

XX

Baroque sideboard from the New York Exhibition, 18531854. Decorating this extremely ornate sideboard are carved depictions

FIGURE P.1.

of dead animals, which link this dining room piece with masculinity and the violence of the hunt.

then, is often related to how they think about and relate to each other in terms of gender. For many of us (Euro-Americans), the most obvi­ ous gendered space is our home. Is there a large chair in the living room that is usually occupied by the "man of the house"? Who is in charge of arranging the furniture and decorating the rooms? Who keeps the home clean and in order? We don't often think to raise these questions because the answers seem so obvious. It is precisely the taken-for-grantedness of roles and behaviors in our homes that makes their embedded gender politics so powerful. Most people don't stop to question whether (or why) the man of the house needs (or deserves) his own chair. Yet we can raise similar questions about a whole range of issues: Why do women and men tend to work in dif­ ferent jobs, in different ways, and in different spaces? Why are the suburbs supposed to embody a certain ideal of family, while the city represents a more masculine, public world? Why is nature often rep­ resented in feminine form? In this book, we raise these types of questions about some of the most basic ways we organize our everyday lives, and the ways our lives

Preface

XXI

First man and First woman rcquntcd rhc hopn

be

blessed

wnh whire and yellow cornmeal, wnh pollen and powder from prayer sticlr.L Blcssinpay

sonp

.arc addressed to Sky, Eanh,

Ra1n. With four songs, the hogan

11 blessed by marluna the four darttt1ons wnh tM cornmeal and powder.

Southtm Pok

NorthnnPok

'Mountain World's Lq'

'Corn World's Lq'

plaa turquoise ur*r

place obsidian under

East

Diagram of a prototype Navajo hogan. As symbolic repre­ sentations of the cosmos, hogans are divided into male and female spheres, each of equal importance. FIGURE P.2.

are often organized for us by society. As feminist geographers, we en­ gage these questions through our understanding of place and gen­ der. Three interlocked observations serve as our departure points: ( 1) that the design and use of our built environment is determined in part by assumptions about gender roles and relations-or, as we like to say, space is gendered; (2) that spatial organization and relations are not simply a neutral backdrop for human dramas, but instead help to shape them; (3) that gender is an important interpretive lens that influences human relationships to and perceptions of both built and natural environments. The story we tell, then, extends from our understanding of the terms space, place, gender, and sexuality. "Space" and "place" are words that, like "time," seem so commonsensical as to not require defini­ tion. Yet as geographers (whose �aison d'etre is often thought to be the exploration of space and place), we will be using these words in particular ways. When we use, for example, the word "space," we are not referring to planetary explorati(m! What we mean is that all of our actions take place in particular locations. In this sense, "space"

XXII

P reface

refers to the three-dimensionality of life-to its material form. We of­ ten think of material forms, such as houses and communities and cit­ ies, as organized in certain ways.Their patterning and organization, as well as their relative locations (as measured on a map, for exam­ ple), are central to our understanding of the role of spatial organiza­ tion in social life. For example, we feel it useful to ask questions about the significance of the proximity of shopping malls to middle­ class residential areas; the reasons for the internal arrangement of the shops within the mall; and the importance of the daily social in­ teractions that occur there. "Place" has a different connotation. We use it to refer to spaces that have been invested with meaning. An appropriate illustration is found in the words house and home. "House" is a drier term that refers to the physical structure-and perhaps to its relative location, its ar­ rangement of rooms, and so on. A "house" becomes a "home" when we invest it with our personal meanings and associations. So we might say that "spaces" become "places" when we have some per­ sonal association with them. Because of this, we might study place in a manner different from space; instead of numerical measures, we would probably use more personal methods designed to understand particulars instead of generalities. For example, examining the shop­ ping mall as a place would include analysis of shoppers' experiences of it, and of the relationship of those experiences to the history of shopping, and to the forces in society that operate to reinforce the as­ sociation of women, femininity, and consumption. We don't mean to suggest here that there is a clear and certain difference between the terms space and place, only to point out that each term tends to repre­ sent different aspects of geographical curiosity. Which brings us to gender. In this book, we use the term gender to refer to a culture's assumptions about the differences between men and women: their "characters," the roles they play in society, what they represent. Scholars used to differentiate "gender" from "sex." They argued that "gender" referred to the attributes assigned by culture, attributes that therefore were variable and unfixed over time and space. "Sex," on the other hand, referred to those attributes assigned by biology, attributes that were fixed by nature. Yet that conceptual division is eroding as we have come to see the variabilities of biology, and as we have exam ined how cultures assign bodies par­ ticular meanings. We will be using "gender" as an inclusive word to refer to all the literal and metaphorical ways that cultures mark dif­ ferences between women and men. We will use "sexuality" to refer to the sexual behavior and actions of women and men. This book will show how intimately connected these terms are. Readers will see the relationships between common assumptions about the roles, actions, and portrayals of men and women (gender),

Preface

XXlll

the patterns and organization of how we live (space), and the particu­ lar locations in which we invest meaning (place). Our scale of analysis will range from the home to the world, from our intimate connec­ tions with local environs to global concerns over environmental is­ sues, and from individual lives to those represented only by dots on maps. Using examples and case studies drawn primarily from the re­ search of scholars in geography, we will provide the evidence for our main argument: that the gendering of space and place, and the role that space and place play in the making of gender, matter. In other words, we argue that it matters that shopping malls are designed to fit middle-class notions of femininity; that secretaries rarely have pri­ vate offices, but instead are assigned spaces that can be seen by oth­ ers; that it is "masculinist" institutions that have precipitated global environmental crises. It matters because the decisions that are made about our everyday lives, based in outmoded ideas of gender, are fixed in our �veryday places and spaces. The maintenance of these outmoded ideas ser\res the people who have the power to make the farthest reaching decisions in our society. Feminist geography helps us see that power concretely, and by so doing, gives us an important entry point for challenging it.

Chapter 1

HOME

T

he association of home with women and femininity is so com­ monplace that it is often considered natural. Let's think for a mo­ ment of the two images of women that have dominated popular media in the United States during the past fifty years: the "happy homemaker" of the baby-boom years, presiding over her new subur­ ban home, and the "working woman" of the 1980s and 1990s, run­ ning between her demanding job and her perfectly styled home. These two stereotypical images of womanhood are powerful: they have fueled political rhetoric on both sides of the arguments about the "progress" of the women's movement, and they have come to epitomize the values and lifeways of particular generations of Ameri­ cans: the "stay-at-home mom" represents "traditional" family values and harks back to the purported stability of the U.S. postwar years; the "working woman" speaks of the breaking down of gender bound­ aries and of the challenges of new family roles for both women and men. Both these powerful images of women rely on the home as the basis for definition: in the case of the "traditional" women by her lit­ eral attachment to home, in that of the "working" women by the fact that her activities take place at a distance from home. So home, both literally and metaphorically, is intimately in­ volved in popular definitions of contemporary womanhood. And this association is not just an abstract concept: women themselves seem to derive more of their identities from their domestic life than do men. When guests arrive for dinner, it is usually the woman who

2

P U T T I N G WO M E N I N P L AC E

worries about what judgments they make: Is her house tidy? Are there clean towels in the bathroom? Will her planned menu please her guests' trendy taste buds? Although it is certainly true that women still shoulder the lion's share of housework (a recent survey estimated that married women spend forty hours a week on house­ hold chores, compared to seventeen for men; Health, 1999), there seems to be something more than work invested in their homes­ some intangible connection to self and identity. Geographers Susan Hanson and Geraldine Pratt ( 1995) found in their study in Worces­ ter, Massachusetts, that women almost always live closer to their place of work than do men, no matter if they are married or single, have or do not have children. For reasons that were left unspecified, because seemingly so "natural," it was just more important for women than for men to have their homes close to where they spent their days working. Men may take pride in the greenness of their lawn, or in the barbecue grill in the backyard, but for the most part it is women's identities and women's interests that are bound up with the idea of, and the literal form of, the home. As geographers, we are certainly curious about this most "feminine" of spaces. What is the history of this powerful association between the home and women? Have women always been defined in relation to the home? And what are the implications of such a deep-seated and seemingly "natural" association?

THE SEPARATION OF SPHERES To start, we need to think historically about the home, and to con­ sider when and how it became a place that was separate from "work." We know that prior to about the sixteenth century in Europe, this separation was not complete. In medieval Europe, for example, most people were engaged in some form of agriculture, and their houses served as both living spaces and work spaces. Both men and women were involved in productive labor, though there was a differentiation between the tasks usually assigned to men and those to women. Women, for example, did most of the food preparation (including, interestingly enough, the brewing of beer!), as well as spinning, weav­ ing, and sewing clothing. Women also shared the agricultural labor with men, including planting, plowing, harvesting, and tending to an­ imals. The houses of these agricultural workers were usually small and spare (Figure 1. 1). Eating and sleeping areas surrounded a central hearth. Indeed, many peasants shared their roofs with their farm ani­ mals-a separate building to serve as a barn was an expense most

FIGURE 1.1. A medieval houseplan. Most agricultural medieval homes were simple in design, with spaces undifferentiated by use, or by gender.

could not afford. Except for this division between living spaces and animal spaces, the medieval European "commoner's" house itself was generally not divided into separate rooms. These spaces were un­ differentiated by gender, and were used interchangeably for the wide range of activities necessary to support agricultural life. In these cir­ cumstances, it is difficult to think of the house itself as the domain of one sex, although it was probably true that women spent more time in it, given their work in food preparation and clothing manufacture. Massive socioeconomic and geographical changes occurred in Europe throughout the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centu­ ries. These centuries saw the transition into the modem period, marked in part by the emergence of early capitalism. It is difficult, if not impossible, to pinpoint what led to the changes that ushered in the modern age, or to say exactly how and when these changes be­ gan, but we do know that the economic, social, and geographical real­ ities of people living in the 1700s were qualitatively different from those living in the 1400s. One of the most significant of these changes, at least in terms of our discussion here, is that work spaces and living spaces became separate. This certainly did not happen all at once, nor in all cases. But the rise of urban life, the consolidation of capitalism as the dominant economic system, and the increase in local and long-distance trading during this period led to the removal of jobs from the home. Making beer, for example, went from being a job that was done in the farmyard by women, to a job that was done in the cities by men. Brewing developed into a commercial enterprise

4

P t:T T I N G WO M E N I N P LAC E

that was located away from the home and funded with capital. The "manufactured" beer was sold to the taverns of the growing cities. Historian Judith Bennett notes the consolidation of brewing in the hands of a few men: "In 1300 many villages boasted numerous fe­ male brewers who supplemented their households' income by selling ale to friends and neighbors; in 1700, those same villages often hosted only a handful of male brewers" ( 1994: 59). For the emerging European middle classes, the changes of the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries often meant that the home was in­ creasingly defined by its separateness from work. Women continued their work within the home, such as child care, food preparation, and sewing, but increasingly their jobs came to be defined as qualitatively different from the jobs men did outside the home. The role of "pro­ duction" was separated from that of "reproduction," and men be­ came the productive wage earners, while women carried on the reproductive tasks for the family. We need to emphasize here that the reality of women's lives dur­ ing the early capitalist period often did not conform to this stereo­ type. Many women of the working and middle classes toiled for wages because their families required the income. They were en­ gaged in a variety of jobs, including manufacturing, and their work was not punctuated by time-out for child rearing. As historian Marga­ ret Hunt points out, eighteenth-century middle-class women in Eng­ land "were most likely to have jobs outside the home during the prime childbearing years. Women were heavily concentrated in occu­ pations that were heavy and dangerous both for them and for their children, . . . that demanded that they spend a considerable amount of time away from home, and that left them little additional time for household tasks" ( 1996: 136). Nonetheless, even though many members of the working and middle classes couldn't afford the luxury of having only one wage earner in the family, they were not immune from the powerful ideol­ ogy that separated the male world of work and the female world of home and family. This ideology associated certain values with these two "worlds." The masculine realm was portrayed as one of equal in­ dividuals going out into the world to prove themselves through eco­ nomic competition. In distinction, the feminine world of the home was portrayed as one of people joined together in a communal struc­ ture (but one that was importantly hierarchical). The husband was in charge of the family, the wife had her subservient but complemen­ tary role as caretaker and spiritual center, and the children followed instruction in order to take over future care of the family. Individuals in the family, therefore, in principle related to each other through the bonds of familial obligation and compassion (Nicholson, 1986). In other words, by the eighteenth century throughout much of

Home

5

the Western world, men worked to earn money, women worked for "love." It is important to recognize that the development of this ide­ ology of "separate spheres" served very particular purposes; the sepa­ ration of a masculine world of work and production from a feminine world of family and reproduction was essential to the ideology of the emerging capitalist system. This system required a commitment to hard work and competition in the marketplace, and at the same time required the behind-the-scenes care and nurturance of family and children, and the unpaid maintenance of the physical (and psycho­ logical) needs of the workers. This formation of feminine and masculine spheres of life be­ came more entrenched with the industrialization of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in Western Europe and North America. One of the main features of industrialization was the transformation of cities. For the middle and upper classes, spaces in the city became segregated as home and work moved further and further apart. Let's look at the case of London more closely since it is often considered a prime example of an early industrial city. In London, industrial areas began to concentrate to the east of St. Paul's Cathedral, while the area to the West, closer to Westminster, the court, and the nobility, became home to the middle and upper classes. These residential sec­ tions, such as Soho Square and Covent Garden, represent the first spaces devoted exclusively to residential land use, and to one group of residents: the middle and upper classes (Figure 1.2). In these elite residential enclaves, the idea of a home as a preserve distinct from the world of work came to fruition. These elegant townhomes were meant as spaces for leisurely activities, for entertaining guests, and for displaying wealth, while the competitive world of men's work took place in the office or the factory, far removed from these domes­ tic enclaves. Such a differentiation of the use of urban space was carried across the Atlantic, so that as early as the late eighteenth century cit­ ies such as New York and Boston developed their own distinctive middle- and upper-class residential enclaves. The massive industrial­ ization of the nineteenth century brought this segregation of land uses to most cities in the United States. New York's Upper West Side, Boston's Back Bay, and Chicago's Gold Coast are all known as exclu­ sive residential areas for the upper classes. It is important to recognize that this elaboration of a feminine, private sphere of home and a masculine, public sphere of work was articulated much more clearly at the level of ideology than it was on the ground. In other words, even though the eighteenth and nine­ teenth centuries witnessed segregation of urban land uses, and the separation of areas of work from areas of home, that separation was never complete. For one thing, most middle-class women considered

6

P U T T I N G W O M E N I N P LAC E

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