Genero, identidad y lugar

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Community, City and Locality
Introduction
In the preceding chapter I argued that the development of a spatial division between the private arena of the home and the public arena of the worlds of waged work, politics and power in industrial societies was crucial in the social construction of accepted attributes of femininity and masculinity. Not only is this division made visible in thesymbolic meaning and material structure of the home, but it is also writ large in the spatial layout of urban areas: in the separation of residential from industrial areas (what British town planners term 'non-conforming uses'), in the notions of community planning and healthy living, and in ideas about social balance and 'the family' reflected in new towns, village developments and housing estateswhere three bedroomed houses are the major form of provision. Assumptions about the places of the sexes also thread through the design of public buildings, where spaces for men's use and for women's use are often distinguishable by evident signs of status (think of the average head of department's office and that of his it usually is a man - secretary), or are segregated, in sports arenas andfacilities, for example. Certain buildings - monasteries and convents are the most obvious example, but also some schools and clubs - are strictly for one sex only. Other buildings, because of their grandeur and their long association with masculine forms of power, may be intimidating to enter, not only for many women but also for men in less powerful class positions - here the Houses of Parliament orthe grander Oxbridge colleges are good examples. Yet other buildings, because of their association with one sex, are off-putting to the other: pool halls or certain pubs (ponder that combination - the public house - which seems such a contradiction in terms) for women, and for most men perhaps the child health clinic and the maternity ward. The social and cultural construction of gender relationsand their ex96

Community, City and Locality pression in the built environment have become a key area of feminist research (Bondi 1991; Booth et al. 1996; Boys 1984, 1990; Greed 1994; Hayden 1981, 1984; Little 1994; Little et al. 1988; Matrix 1984; McDowell 1983; Roberts 1991; Spain 1993; Watson with Austerberry 1986) in the last two decades or so. It is also important to look at the lives andintentional actions of individuals as they negotiate and change these structures. In this chapter, therefore, I shall examine some of this work, focusing on the level of the community, rather than on particular buildings. By community I mean places at an intermediate scale: a locality or residential area within a city, for example, or rural and single-industry villages. I want to explore thequestion of whether different versions of masculinity and femininity are associated with, reflect and affect socio-spatial relations in these different places. In this chapter, too, questions about the ways in which class and ethnic divisions are part of the social construction of particular versions of gendered identities in different places will be raised. There is a long geographic tradition,deriving from the work of the Chicago School of urban sociologists in the first decades of the twentieth century, of analyses of the spatial segregation of different populations in cities. More recently gender and sexuality have become a focus, as well as the more traditional foci of race and class. It is perhaps not surprising that the social construction of gender and gender divisions were long ignoredby geographers, because not only was gender considered 'natural' but men and women are spread throughout the urban area rather than confined to particular localities - unlike groups distinguished by social class or by ethnicity. For many years, therefore, it seemed as if there was no question to investigate; now, however, the relationships between the built form, urban symbolism and sexed and...