Alice Peultier

April 17th, 2021

Planning for Justice Newsletter: March 2021

0 comments | 1 shares

Estimated reading time: 10 minutes

Alice Peultier

April 17th, 2021

Planning for Justice Newsletter: March 2021

0 comments | 1 shares

Estimated reading time: 10 minutes

Some monthly readings from our library on

Perspectives on Gender and Space

This month we explore the Feminist Library Catalogue archives through academics, writers and poets

Academic books

Gerda R. Wekerle, Rebecca Peterson, David Morley, 1981. “New Space for Women”, Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press.

“New Space for Women” was published shortly after the first UN conference on Human Settlements held in Vancouver in 1976 (Habitat I). The authors organised one of the conference sessions focussing on the role of women in urban planning and design and were at that time confronted to an acute lack of information and support. This book is the first to bring together experience and viewpoints from urban professionals, researchers, and environmental activists in a collection of empirical works exploring women’s diverse urban experience and roles in changing their environment. Structured around different spatial scales and actions levels, from domestic and urban design to environmental governance and activism, “New Space for Women” questions women’s socio-cultural relation to their environment.

Caroline Sweetman, 1996. “Women and Urban Settlement”, Oxford: Oxfam.

Part of Oxfam’s 1996 “Focus on Gender” series, this collection of essays advocates for further consider of the gendered dimensions of urban planning and housing policies. Published shortly before the second UN conference Habitat II, “Women and Urban Settlement” calls for a recognition of gender inequalities in cities to depart from a “gender-neutral” approach to planning. The book explores unequal participation to urban governance projects’ formulation and decision making, gendered dimensions of rural-urban migrations in China, community organising and women’s health in Ecuador, and displacement and housing in Afghanistan. A myriad of academic works and policy reports have since been published on the topic, notably criticising an initial approach risking to essentialise socio-economic characteristics to the constructed category of “women” as well as a tendency to apply “Global North” concepts to “Global South” contexts. This collection of essays however brought attention to gender issues to policy makers in international organisations at a time when urban issues were becoming central to the development agenda.

Marion Roberts, 1991. “Living in a Man-Made World: Gender Assumptions in Housing Design”, London: Routledge.

Scaling down the analysis to housing design, architect Marion Roberts’ book is the first to thoroughly examine the relationship between gender and housing design. Her study focuses on state housing in Britain in the decade following the Second World War, exploring the assumptions underpinning policy makers and designers’ design choices. Some of the key findings include how housing form was designed for a nuclear family presumably “headed” by male breadwinner, or how new housing was mainly provided next to jobs destined at skilled male employees. Marion Roberts highlights how housing policies in post-war Britain were strongly influenced by a gendered vision of the family and division of labour, leading to a reproduction of those inequalities onto the newly built environment.

 

Arts & Poetry

Marsha Meskimmon, 1997. “Engendering the City: Women Artists and Urban Space – Nexus: Theory & Practice in Contemporary Women’s Photography”, London: Scarlet Press.

Marsha Meskimmon is a professor in Transnational Art and Feminism at the Loughborough University. Her research connects transnational art movements to feminisms, exploring the arts’ potential to engage with political issues and express social concerns. In “Engendering the City”, Meskimmon gathers works from “City Limits”, an exhibition focusing on women photographers held at Staffordshire University in 1996. The volume explores the gendered boundaries and experience in cities, examining the politics of representation of the female body. Analysing visual material questioning gender in relation to space, “Engendering the City” bridges the gap between theory and practice by focussing on how ideas can be transformed into actions and arts.

Ketaki Kushari Dyson, 1983. “Space Inhabit”, Calcutta: Navana.

“Space Inhabit” is a collection of poems touching upon daily life and socio-political issues, written from a multi-cultural and feminist perspective. Ketaki Kushari Dyson is Bengali and English. She self-identifies as a “writer of the Indian diaspora since the sixties, writing transnationally”[1], notably focussing on transnational migrations and diasporas. Space, cultural diversity and intercultural mediation constitute the core focus of her writings, from poems and fiction to drama and scholarly work.


[1] Ketaki Kushari Dyson, About. [Accessed the 17.03.21: https://www.ketakikusharidyson.org/]

 

 

Non-Fiction

Lauren Elkin, 2016. “Flâneuse: Women Walk the City in Paris, New York, Tokyo, Venice and London”, New York: Vintage.  

Lauren Elkin is an American writer based in Paris. In “Flâneuse”, she offers a both cultural and historical approach to women’s engagement with urban life “from the ground”. From Virginia Woolf, Jean Rhys, George Sand and Sophie Calle to Agnès Varda, Lauren Elkin casts a different light on the traditionally masculine 19th century “flâneur” figure. Drawing on historical sources and texts from these artists as well as on her own experience, the author celebrates “walking” as an empowering and subversive way to get around the city and spur creativity.

 

Fiction

Christine de Pizan, 1405. “The Book of the City of Ladies”, Reprint, London: Picador, 1983.

Christine de Pizan was a French writer and poet at the court of Charles VI. She wrote “The Book of the City of Ladies” in 1405, a novel depicting a utopian female-only city. In her book, the author celebrates numerous female historical figures and creates a fictional environment where women are free from men’s domination and violence. The political message Christine de Pizan’s communicates with the construction of the City of Ladies is often considered as one of the earliest feminist advocacies. She imagines a utopian environment where women have universal access to education and the possibility to govern; she also discusses inequalities spurring from the institution of marriage.

 

About the author

Alice Peultier

Alice is a master’s graduate in the Urban Policy Dual Degree programme between LSE (RUPS) and Sciences Po Paris (Urban and Territorial Strategies). She is particularly interested in gender and environmental justice, exploring how a gender-aware approach to urban resilience planning can contribute to build more inclusive cities. She holds a bachelor’s from Sciences Po Paris and studied one year abroad at UBC, Vancouver. She recently joined a consultancy in Paris working on urban developement strategies for local authorities and private actors.

Posted In: Planning for Justice

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