Why Women Don’t Feel at Home in Cities
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Urban spaces make life more difficult for women, writes Leslie Kern in “Feminist City”
How do you dismantle the patriarchy? Over the past few centuries, the feminist movement has successfully disassembled power structures and remodeled societal norms that oppressed women. For the most part, these structures have been (and continue to be) social constructs in that they exist in our collective imagination rather than as tangible objects. This means that advancing gender equality typically requires changing society’s thinking rather than rebuilding physical spaces that embody progress.
Cities are a notable exception.
As Leslie Kern recounts in Feminist City: Claiming Space in a Man-made World, our urban environments aren’t built to accommodate women; instead, they’ve been designed with traditional gender roles in mind and with men’s needs and experiences at the forefront. And as such, our cities and suburbs have been mapped out according to the nuclear family unit, in which the male breadwinner provides for the jobless housewife and the underage kids.
Though this family structure is no longer dominant, urban landscapes with inadequate public transport links and a lack of childcare facilities continue to reflect outdated norms. And so, while the traditional 1950s housewife might no longer be around, the permanency of urban landscapes means she’s been, quite literally, set in stone.
Keeping women isolated and out of public spaces is a design feature rather than a flaw — and one that goes way back. “Women have always been seen as a problem for the modern city,” Kern writes. Drawing on her own experience of city life and referencing the work of female geographers, scholars, architects, and urban planners, Kern asserts how women’s access to urban and public spaces has historically been fraught with obstacles.
For instance, in Victorian times, white women of high status had to be chaperoned in public spaces for fear that if left alone, they could be mistaken for sex workers. To be a prostitute or a “fallen woman,” as was the term de rigeur at the time, meant social exile. To that end, men, including writer Charles Dickens, suggested that “fallen women” should be relegated to the colonies. In turn, Indigenous populations were removed from developing urban areas by colonialists, allegedly to protect said white women settlers from colonized people who were vilified as “savages.”
Nowadays, while society has largely moved past the egregious social norms of the Victorian era, Kern argues that plenty of hurdles are still in place:
“[…] women still experience the city through a set of barriers — physical, social, economic, and symbolic — that shape their lives in ways that are deeply (although not only) gendered.”
Throughout Feminist City, Kern — an associate professor of geography and director of women’s and gender studies at Mount Allison University in Canada — reinforces that such barriers exist not only for women but pretty much anyone who isn’t a cisgender, able-bodied white guy.
For Kern, it was pregnancy and motherhood that showed her just how pervasive these barriers were. From rarely being offered a seat on public transit, lack of elevator access in metro stations, and being verbally abused for pushing a stroller in a supermarket, Kern says her city experience became increasingly tense and hostile.
But these obstacles extend beyond inadequate public transit and bitter commuters — Feminist City shows how childcare logistics are a nightmare for working women. In the face of exorbitant daycare prices, the only way Kern could pursue her master’s degree as a new mother was by starting what she calls “the city’s smallest babysitting co-op,” which consisted of swapping childminding duties with another mum. This kind of improvised setup is often the only solution for non-affluent families who can’t afford to outsource caretaking duties to nannies and housekeepers (often migrant women living far away from their own families and children).
Once again, this comes down to the legacy of the nuclear family, around which urban landscapes are built, which hinders working women rather than helps them. Not only is this model outdated, but it’s also “a really inefficient way to utilize labor,” writes Kern, who argues that dividing child care and household duties amongst multiple households (which would require new, feminist housing designs) would allow women to juggle work and care duties better.
One compelling solution that Kern offers is to re-imagine our cities not with traditional family ties but with female friendships at the center. “Although friendship is often overlooked in favor of a focus on romantic partnerships, it’s a powerful force that women rely on in many ways. Friendships with other women also shape the ways that women engage with the city itself,” she writes.
Citing examples from pop culture and literature, including TV shows like Sex and The City, Kern highlights how female friendships can help women adjust to life and prosper in urban environments. Equally, cities can facilitate these friendships by offering physical proximity and transport links (features that suburbs often lack). As such, in an ideal feminist city, urban planning would take these friendship networks into account in a way that fosters them and helps them flourish.
But Kern is skeptical that urban policy and planning will evolve in this direction. With the private real estate market dictating development and the huge cost of commercial real estate, it’s unlikely that urban spaces built to accommodate female friendship instead of traditional family units will proliferate. Besides, there’s something radical about elevating friendships above the nuclear family. On how stronger female friendship networks could threaten capitalism and the status quo, Kern writes:
“Perhaps imagining the city centered on friendship seems impossible simply because of this: if women dedicated even a little bit more of their love, labor, and emotional support to their friend networks, the system — as men know it — would come crashing down.”
Aside from mutual companionship and the sharing of caretaking duties, female friendships are crucial for feeling safer in the city. Multiple studies show that women are fearful of crime in urban spaces, even if data shows they are more likely to experience violence inside the home than outside. This is partly due to socialization: from a young age, girls are told they are vulnerable and that danger is lurking around every corner. Historically, men have used this fear to their advantage by restricting women’s use of public places while simultaneously portraying themselves as their defenders.
This only serves to hinder women’s social, psychological economic progress. Kern outlines some of the solutions that have been devised, including better lighting on streets, emergency phone boxes, and smartphone apps that allow women to report harassment on public transport. But ultimately, studies show that these features don’t always make women feel safer. This epiphany is often a source of discouragement for Kern’s university students. She writes: “They were so hopeful thinking about environmental and design solutions. And then they realize that no amount of lighting is going to abolish the patriarchy.”
Feminist City
Claiming Space in a Man-Made World
by Leslie Kern
