Towards an Understanding of the Gender Division of Urban Space

The paper contains a critical review of urban theory and of some current work in urban studies on ‘women's issues’. It is argued that the nature of the changing interrelationships between production and reproduction, as part of a single inseparable process that varies across space and over time, should be the key focus for a feminist urban studies. Ways in which an understanding of these changing relationships can add to the analysis of housing policy in postwar Britain are outlined.

The principal aim of the paper is advocacy, and the plea is for feminist theory and feminist analysis. It is beginning to be accepted that urban studies, by ignoring gender divisions, is neglecting an important structuring element of urban space and urban processes. Recognition of the significance of gender divisions, however, must not lead to an insistence on analysis focusing solely on women and women's behaviour. Thus the object of feminist research should not be women alone, but rather the structure of social relations that contributes to female oppression, this involving confrontation with the theoretical issues raised by an analysis of patriarchy (a term used here to refer to temporally and spatially specific relations between men and women, rather than to the oppression of all women in all forms of society). Despite the advances already made in integrating women's lives into urban studies, a large number of the studies about women and the urban environment are ultimately unsatisfactory. Their foci stop short at the description and analysis of women's behaviour only. However, this is not to denigrate the very real function they serve in bringing gender differences to the research forefront. After a review of the literature on gender differences in the organisation, use, and conception of urban space, a more specific focus for a feminist urban studies is outlined, with an example of how this might be applied to the historical analysis of postwar housing policy in Britain.