Feminist Practice: Social Movements and Urban|Course hero helper
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Chapter Title: Feminist Practice: Social Movements and Urban Space Book Title: Constructive Feminism
Book Subtitle: Women’s Spaces and Women’s Rights in the American City
Book Author(s): Daphne Spain
Published by: Cornell University Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7591/j.ctt18kr5mx.6
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25
q Chapter 1
Feminist Practice Social Movements and Urban Space
Social movements on behalf of marginalized people in the United States have been the engines for significant progress toward a just society. They take shape when one or more highly visible advo- cates (Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem, in the case of postwar feminism) identifies an injustice and brings it to public attention; they gain strength when grassroots activists engage in collective action.1 New spatial institutions became a hallmark of the Second Wave; creating them was a practice femi- nists inherited from US social movements that preceded them. Meaningful spaces, both religious and secular, sheltered disenfranchised groups while they gained the momentum to fight for their rights.
A long-standing scholarly emphasis on ideology has been augmented by the recognition that social movements also depend on a common identity as a basis for action. This distinction differentiates “old” from “new” social movements. “Old movements” are based on economic and class interests that mobilize participants to address injustices through a shared ideology, while “new movements” emphasize a common identity.2 Second Wave feminism incorporated both. On the one hand, radical feminists proposed that women were a class, thereby centering them squarely in a Marxist ideology.3 Other feminists underscored formerly weak dimensions of identity, such as sexual preference, as a common bond. Developing positive identities requires mem- bers to reject the dominant, oppressive society and create their own values
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26 CHAPTER ONE
and structures.4 At its extreme, this leads to lesbians creating male-free com- munities. Some feminists used disruptive tactics to refute old identities.5 In 1968 the New York Radical Women staged guerilla theater actions at the Miss America beauty pageant in Atlantic City. To protest women’s being judged only by their looks, about 150 demonstrators crowned a sheep as Miss America, then tossed their bras, high-heeled shoes, girdles, and hair curlers into a “freedom trash can.” They never burned the contents, but the media gleefully portrayed feminists as “bra burners” ever after.6
According to the sociologists Frances Fox Piven and Richard Cloward, mass defiance is most disruptive when protesters withdraw a crucial contri- bution from the institution that depends on it; they have their greatest polit- ical impact when powerful groups have large stakes in the disrupted institu- tion. Those in power must also possess resources to grant if the protesters are to be satisfied.7 This theory was translated into practice when Second Wave feminists challenged the very institution of marriage, urging wives to demand that their husbands help with housekeeping and child care. Release from sole responsibility for domestic tasks, the thinking went, would enable women to establish full public citizenship. Men were less enthusiastic; it would be hard to overstate their investment in traditional marriage. Their ability to earn a living depended heavily on women’s unpaid work at home. And in the late 1970s most people in the United States supported that arrangement. National opinion polls revealed that approximately two-thirds of men and women agreed that it was “much better for everyone involved if the man is the achiever outside the home and the woman takes care of the home and family.”8 Feminists thus faced a skeptical audience when they tried to convince women that there were alternatives to marriage and the typical division of household labor. Eventually, though, feminists’ attitudes began to permeate society. By 1986 about one-half of women and men believed that wives should care for the home while men earned a living outside it.9
Such significant social change required feminists to create places where women could learn to demand it. A long line of social movements set the example. The abolition, suffrage, temperance, settlement house, and civil rights movements all changed the use of urban space. The Second Wave was next in line.
Historical Precedents
203
Notes
Preface
1. Constructive Feminism: Reconstruction of the Woman’s Building, directed by Sheila Ruth, produced by Sheila Ruth, Diana Johnson, and Annette Hunt (Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute Research Library, 1975), http://.library.getty.edu/cgi-bin/ Pwebrecon.cgi?BBID=705169. Sheila Ruth is deceased. I obtained permission from Annette Hunt to use the title of their video.
2. Terry Wolverton, Insurgent Muse: Life and Art at the Woman’s Building (San Fran- cisco: City Lights, 2002), xv. Nineteenth-century suffragists used the word “woman” as a universal designation, hence the Woman’s Building for women’s arts.
3. Author’s interview with Sue Maberry, Director of Library and Instructional Design, Otis College of Art and Design, Los Angeles, March 12, 2010.
4. Wolverton, Insurgent Muse, 6. 5. Second Wave feminism of the 1960s and 1970s drew its inspiration from
the nineteenth century’s First Wave of suffragists who won women’s right to vote in 1920.
6. Dolores Hayden, The Grand Domestic Revolution: A History of Feminist Designs for American Homes, Neighborhoods, and Cities (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1981).
7. Sarah Deutsch, Women and the City: Gender, Space, and Power in Boston, 1870–1940 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000); Elizabeth York Enstam, Women and the Creation of Urban Life: Dallas, Texas, 1843–1920 (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1998); Maureen Flanagan, Seeing with their Hearts: Chi- cago Women and the Vision of the Good City, 1871–1933 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002); Marta Gutman, A City for Children: Women, Architecture, and the Charitable Landscapes of Oakland, 1850–1950 (Chicago and London: The Uni- versity of Chicago Press, 2014); Jessica Ellen Sewell, Women and the Everyday City: Public Space in San Francisco, 1890–1915 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2011); Despina Stratigakos, A Women’s Berlin: Building the Modern City (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008).
8. Ruth Lister, Citizenship: Feminist Perspectives, 2nd ed. (New York: New York University Press, 2003); Mary Ryan, Women in Public: Between Banners and Ballots, 1825–1880 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990); Marilyn Friedman, ed., Women and Citizenship (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).
9. Elisabeth Armstrong, The Retreat from Organization: U.S. Feminism Reconceptual- ized (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002); Sara Evans, “Re-Viewing the Second Wave,” Feminist Studies 28, no. 2 (2002): 259–67; Kathleen Laughlin and Jacqueline Castledine, eds., Breaking the Wave: Women, Their Organizations, and Femi- nism, 1945–1985 (New York: Routledge, 2011); Linda J. Nicholson, ed., The Second
Spain, Daphne. Constructive Feminism : Women’s Spaces and Women’s Rights in the American City, Cornell University Press, 2016. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/csupomona/detail.action?docID=4517908. Created from csupomona on 2023-02-28 22:16:45.
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SOLUTION
Feminist practice is a broad and diverse field that encompasses a wide range of social movements and practices aimed at achieving gender equality and justice. Urban spaces have historically been sites of struggle for feminists, as they reflect and reproduce societal power dynamics and gender inequalities.One example of feminist practice in urban spaces is the creation of safe and inclusive public spaces. Feminist activists have long advocated for urban design that prioritizes the safety and well-being of women and marginalized communities, including the implementation of better lighting, increased police presence, and the creation of public spaces that are free from harassment and violence.
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