How the Patriarchy was Cemented into Cities
Men gather in a public space enjoying themselves, with women off to the side. Photographed by Nicole Roach in August 2021 in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
Women experience the city differently than men.
Many women experience cat-calls and other forms of harassment while out in public, no matter what they are wearing or doing. Many women adjust their behaviours to increase their perception of safety, choosing particular routes to avoid secluded areas and doing frequent shoulder checks. Many women also seek out privatized spaces, such as shops, to feel a sense of protection provided by security or exclusive membership.
These are occurrences and behaviours that men rarely, if ever, experience.
These examples stem from our long-standing systems of gender inequality, which, in turn, shaped the urban environments of today. So, how exactly did these systems seep into our urban design?
To illustrate this, we need to go back to 1700s Europe. At this time, there was a strong sense of who should and who should not be doing paid work amongst the upper white class. The segregation of paid and unpaid labour between the ‘breadwinner’ husband and ‘homemaker’ wife meant public spaces only needed to serve the working man, leaving out the consideration of a woman’s needs in an urban environment.
What was also left out of the early building of cities was the needs of paid working women of colour (WOC), the lower class, and those who did sex work.
Although this began centuries ago, this particular way of city building has become discreet to the general public over time. Going back to the beginning can help us to better understand women’s experiences in the 21st-century city.
Cities Were First Built to Keep Women at Home (approximately the 1700s-1850s)
European cities in the 1700s were dominated by male leadership, as men were only allowed to own property that could be bought, inherited, or married into. Women were used as an “exchange” through marriage for inheriting land from their fathers, where some gained titles, but had no authority over property or leadership.
Women were seen as subordinates and were expected to stay home as the caretaker and homemaker, while men were the “breadwinners” working in the city or on farms, expanding the paid labour gap. It was then their responsibility to instill “womanly duties” in their daughters by teaching them how to be good homemakers, reinforcing this ideology through generations. If you were a wealthier white woman, this was typically done by a servant who was a WOC.
The ideology of who should and who should not do paid work based on their gender, race, and social class continued into the first industrial era, as it was then deemed “inappropriate” for women to leave their homes where they fulfilled their roles. This ideology didn’t just keep women from leaving their homes, but it continued to allow cities to be built without them.
Building cities that only considered men’s needs and desires turned quickly into building cities only for men’s needs, desires, and to separate the social classes. The “need” to create defined spaces between the wealthy, and everyone else, soon began to lose its shape when populations of the working class, immigrants, the urban poor, and sex workers dramatically increased. The once posh spaces turned into bustling streets with the mixing of classes, a scene that put the higher class into a bit of a moral panic.
Did the mixing of classes in cities mean women would mix into them, too? Would this threaten the instilled gender norms? Would wealthier white women lose their virtue if they were to enter the city and come across the “other”?
It was almost unimaginable to think a “virtuous” woman would be in the public realm — so men created “appropriately feminine” urban spaces to compensate for it — still ignoring the needs of lower-class and non-caucasian working women.
Creating “Appropriately Feminine” Urban Spaces (approximately the mid to late 1800s)
This thought manifested into the creation of department stores that reinforced gender roles for these women to “become entertained by consuming goods [that] fulfills their roles as caretakers” in 1870s Paris. This trend to control “women’s exposure to the messy public realm” made its way overseas in New York’s Ladies Mile (street of shops for wealthier women). Entire urban districts were then designing retail spaces to keep women in their appropriately feminine spaces and not be mistaken when in the city as a “public woman” — someone who is in sex work.
Even those who lived in poverty and were in sex work were still seen as “failings” and thought to infect others who were exposed, threatening their virtue and being the cause of the failed traditional family. It was widely thought women should not be in the public realm, even for work, during this time.
Source: Fashion History. Higher-Class Ladies Shopping in a New York Department Store.
How Could Cities Control Both Working Women and Homemakers? (Late 1800s-Mid 1900s)
By the mid-nineteenth century London — the largest city in the world at the time — saw its first major suburbs appear as the city center became overcrowded and dirty. To move Londoners to the suburbs, the world’s first passenger underground railway opened and was a major catalyst for the growing suburban sprawl we see today. To attract those (who were deemed attractive) to the suburbs, the Metropolitan Railway posted advertisements depicting the area as a protected space fit for women to be preoccupied with womanly duties while men accessed the city for work via underground railways. Similar advertisements can even be seen today to market developing suburbs, picturing women shopping, gardening, or being neighbourly.
These advertisements pulled women even further away from the city and access to paid work because “If the disorder of cities [working class, people of colour, sex workers, and immigrants] was a threat to certain women, and the disorder of certain women a threat to cities, the suburbs could provide a solution” says Leslie Kern, human geographer and author of Feminist City.
Pulling white wealthier folks, especially women, to the London suburbs during this time may not have been entirely racially motivated — as it was in the United States with the 1949 Housing Act and Shaughnessy Heights in Vancouver — but it did play a role in the exclusionary zoning we see today.
Although women were already at home doing unpaid labour prior to city expansion, the suburbs ensured these duties were continuously being met. This was because, in order to enter the city as a woman, a male chaperon was deemed required. If men were already taking the Metropolitan Railway and other underground routes to go to work, how could their wives leave the suburbs? Rather, a woman is left at home all day taking care of the house and children while her husband is at work in the city. Even if she wanted to enter the city, she was unable to while unaccompanied by her husband.
Source: London Transport Museum & Flickr. Metropolitan Railway Advertisements.
Mass suburbanization followed cities in North America in the 1950s, as it was thought of as a solution to “fix” gender norms that were mixed during the Second World War when men went off to war and women began working in factories.
Once soldiers returned, women were no longer needed to replace their roles as paid working men. Architecture professor, Dolores Hayden, says:
“developers argued that a particular kind of house would help the veteran change from an aggressive air ace to a commuting salesman who mowed the lawn. That house would also help a woman change from Rosie the Riveter to a stay-at-home mom.”
On both continents, Europe and North America, it was a shared thought that separating paid labour from unpaid labour needed to be built within our environments to keep gender roles in order.
The Auto Revolution was Revolutionary, for Men (the mid-1900s - early 2000s)
The first automobile was invented in 1886, but as time, technology, and commerce advanced, they became much more common to own. It was especially common amongst white working men in the mid-to-late 1900s living in the suburbs. Cars were considered “tools of the future” and the “freedom machine”, so space and design were required to enable and manage the auto revolution.
Accordingly, massive highway networks were quickly developed, building them for maximum directness from suburbs into city centres. Designing this infrastructure came from men’s first-hand experience, resulting in faster, wider streets that squeezed out all other road users - like people walking, cycling, or playing.
At this time, many households were one-vehicle households and the male breadwinners travelled in and out of the city each day. This, essentially, left many women stranded at home, unable to access services and amenities by foot, bike, or public transit due to the auto-centric infrastructure. The freedom machine seemed to give men freedom, or at least, the illusion of freedom while isolating women in their prescribed suburban environment.
Historic Gender Labour Roles Shaped Our Cities
The segregation of paid and unpaid labour has played a significant role in cementing gendered ideologies into the infrastructure we use today. It has shaped women’s role in the home, behaviour in public, and experiences while navigating the spaces in between.
While there have been significant advancements in gender equality, failing to recognize and address the patriarchal systems in the built environment will continue to perpetuate these inequalities for centuries to come.
This is just one of many reasons why we need feminist cities - cities that do not seek to control women, do not enforce rigid gender roles, and do not prioritize wealthy white women above WOC, women in lower classes, and sex workers.
We must reimagine cities so that the future of cities is better than the past.
References:
https://auto.howstuffworks.com/cars-dominant-form-transportation.htm
https://thewalrus.ca/when-cities-are-built-for-white-men/
https://thetyee.ca/Culture/2019/11/01/Cities-Built-For-Men/
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/toronto/article-designing-safer-cities-for-women/
https://www.unwomen.org/en/what-we-do/leadership-and-political-participation/womens-movements
https://www.familyhandyman.com/article/women-property-rights-history/
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