City Life

Lecture Outline: Gender and Design Hayden and Brooks Gardner

Film Clip: Codes of Gender

-- the sociological approach to Gender

-- gender as a performance

-- Goffman

-- mass mediated world and the prominence of ‘commercial realism’

-- North American urban forms and the production of a gender binary -- Gender Binary is made so normal (taken for granted) as to be almost unquestionable -- Oppositional relation constructed

Dolores Hayden, “What Would a Non-Sexist City Look Like?”

The Mass Suburban House and the Construction of Gender:

· Isolation

· Disappearance from public life

· Status as mother, homemaker, shopper

· Trivialization of complex roles / seen as more ‘natural’ to women, less worthy of recognition

20th C Mass Suburbs: “good homes make good workers”

-- Design meant to support male worker

Early and mid 20th C pattern:

-- work: paid labour (male)

-- home: unpaid labour (female)

- female as unacknowledged support worker needed for (male) productivity

e.g. The Good Wife’s Guide

Cleaning Commercials, 1950s, 1970s

Even as Women start to enter the work force… Women enter into professions tied to the labour of the home (e.g. domestic work, care industries)

· Mass suburban gender patterns become the norm for paid labour

· (despite the working of women in factories during the war)

· -- shows gendering of occupation not about ability

Later 20th C:

Social changes (both genders in work force)

How women are even more “constrained by design”

Suburban form requires maintenance: 90% of housework done by women

Suburban form requires car: 70% adults without car are female

Hayden: “How does the conventional home serve the employed woman and her family?... It doesn’t.”

Effects of Mass Suburbanization on Women’s Urban (Paid) Work

· Forms of work tied to the labour of the home & women’s disappearance from public life

· The Feminization of Occupations

· The Wage Gap (disparity in relative earnings)

Ontario's gender pay gap cheats women workers, September 17, 2008, Mary Cornish

Today, Sept. 17, is 71 per cent of the way through the year. For women, it marks "Now You're Working for Free Day."

The date is painfully significant for Ontario women who earn on average 71 cents for every dollar men earn. The resulting 29 per cent gender pay gap means that women are effectively denied their fair pay from now until the end of the year while men get their full pay.

Twenty years ago, Ontario introduced the Pay Equity Act in an effort to combat the devaluation of women's work that results from their segregation into low-paid female job ghettos and false assumptions about the skill, effort, responsibility and working conditions involved in such work. The act required employers to evaluate, without bias, jobs done mainly by women and men and to pay equal wages and benefits for comparable worth.

The lowest gap is among women just starting work, but the gap widens as women age. Married women face the widest pay gap at 33 per cent, partly because they bear an unequal share of care responsibilities. The gap continues into retirement as a lifetime of unequal pay and benefits results in retired women receiving a median income just half that of retired men.

Hayden: the Suburban House creates “Wage Slaves”

by 1975: 39% households = dual income

· Second wage required for cost of house / things

· Even in workforce, women often expected to do the 24/7 work of the home

· + time pressures: need to commute

· Only intensifies the pressures on the woman of the house (and further disadvantages the single parent househole)

Commercials in the 21st C: What is different, what is the same?

Spatial Design and Social Inequality:

Work of House Privatized

Wages needed (house, appliances, etc.)

Residential segregation

Consequences for:

· Women’s economic position (home work is unpaid and ‘women’s work’ occupations paid less)

· Women’s domestic responsibilities (home work is not officially recognized, yet requires knowledge)

Women and the “Second shift” (Hochschild)

Differences in Domestic Responsibilities Canada 2011: Source: Robert Brym, New Society (Toronto: Nelson, 2017)

· Housework

· Women – 4.5 hr/day doing repetitive, less attractive chores (meal prep, dishes, cleaning, laundry)

· Men – 3.25 hr/day doing less mandatory chores (lawn work, car and house repairs)

· Childcare (for children under age 4)

· Women – 6.5 hr/day; Men – 3.5 hr/day

· Division of tasks tend to be gendered

Suburban House + the Male Role

Focus on Male as Wage Earner, Worker

There are consequences for men in this pattern as well, but the male role has promoted public action (rather than private) and power/presence (rather than retreat)

Hayden: “Capitalism and Anti-Feminism are Fused in Suburban Design”

· Is there a vested interest in ‘keeping women in their place’?

Proposing Solutions / Changing the Pattern:

· Cuban Family Code 1974

· Copenhagen: Collective housing

· London: Nina West homes

Collective Housing:

· Space divided into both collective / private elements

· Small, private apartments

· Collective spaces: e.g. dining, play, entertainment, transportation

· Choice to work outside collective (put portion of wage in the ‘collective pot’) or inside the collective (cook, clean, etc. and be paid for it)

· Responsibilities are shared

· Presence of varied family forms and groups

Retrofitting the Suburbs

· ways of altering the current suburban design model

· convert garage to shared need (store, daycare, etc)

· link lawns and convert to park, walkway

· smaller private space for more public space

· build in a support network

Serving the (diverse) ‘family’ in urban design….

Real Demographics of the Suburbs: 40 households:

7 single parent + kids

16 2-working parents + kids

13 1 working parent + kids

4 single residents

Hayden: To support women and family life, we need to return to the Metropolitan model (built-in structures of support)

-- forms that are reflective of the ‘real demographics’ of families and offer all family forms the connection to the elements of urban life

Canada in 2014 Example: Co-Housing Project in Vancouver

“Being Neighbourly is a Requirement”, The Globe and Mail, Oct 24, by Kerry Gold

Vancouver’s first co-housing project is finally under construction and presales are almost sold out, with only three units remaining.

The 31-unit project, located on Vancouver’s east side, ranges from studios to four-bedroom units. The remaining units range in price from around $300,000 to $720,000. It may be a first for Vancouver, but it’s a form of housing that’s been undergoing a quiet boom throughout the province. …

B.C. is leading the way in the co-housing movement, which has grown from the idea that community living is better for the environment, is healthier, and, in the long run, is more affordable. Outside of B.C., there are only 10 co-housing projects in Canada, including the ecoHousing Community that’s getting started in Toronto.

“You see the organization of people who are questioning whether or not they need to personally own everything that they want as a part of their life, or whether sharing is a better option. I think co-housing is one of those pieces. They’re asking, ‘Do I need to own guest rooms and a home office? Or can I share it?’”

Co-housing is a Danish idea brought to North America by American architect Charles Durrett. Mr. Durrett, who is based in California, made the concept a reality for Vancouver when he helped a group of cohousing enthusiasts make the project happen. It wasn’t easy. Previous attempts had failed usually because groups couldn’t compete with big developers for land.

Residents also understand that they are part of a unique community, where they will contribute to each other’s lives instead of living in isolation. Residents will likely help each other with daycare, elder care and shared meals. Nobody is required to participate in such activities. But the idea is that purchasers are the sort of people who are open to helping their neighbours and creating a community, rather than living behind closed doors and barely making eye contact. A major benefit for the seniors in the group is that the units are designed so they can age in place, with wheelchair accessibility throughout. “When you have close-knit relationship with the neighbours, there’s this intentionality of saying, ‘I value you as a community member. We are going to figure out how to keep you in the community.’”

Examining The Street and the Framing of Gender:

Carol Brooks Gardner, “Passing By: Street Remarks, Address Rights and the Urban Female”

Interactions in Public Space in the 21st C

Norm: Civil Inattention

Breach: Street Remark

· Common Breaches Need

· The Unusual

· Similarities

· Open persons: e.g. kids, dogs, the disabled… …and women?

Urban Public Life and Women: the Concept of “the open person”

“Women may not be carrying a couch, but might as well be”

-- street remark: women not usually originator, receive more comments / still part of role to be receptive

Street Remarks and the Continuation of the Pattern of Suburbia in the Public Realm:

· The Asymmetry of Urban Public Life

· Women as open to evaluation

· Doesn’t matter if comment nice or nasty

· Issue: comment intrusive but ‘normal’

The Double-Entendre of Street Remarks

· Indirect speech, ambiguity makes responding difficult, and first speak controls ‘definition of the situation’

Gender Roles and Street Dynamics

Women (e.g. aware look is topic, normal to develop strategies) vs. Men (public as ‘home territory’, different skills made normal, such as pursuit)

Gender and Street Advertising

What do these images normalize in the context of the street? Vested interest in producing a simple gender binary that fosters consumption

Seeking to Strengthen the Public Sphere:

The Urban form and fostering Gender Diversity

-- Street as opportunity for variation / play

-- sites that allows for a more complex versions of gender