Moving from the mid-seventeenth century to the near present, this book marks physical and conceptual changes across European towns and examines how gender was implicated and imbricated in those changes.
As places which fostered and disseminated key social, economic, political and cultural developments, towns were central to the creation of gendered identities and the transmission of ideas across local, national and transnational boundaries. From 1650 to 2000, towns grew rapidly and responded to the needs for new infrastructures, physical reconfiguration and ideas of citizenship. Gender relations vary over space and time and are continually altering; such variation underlines the need for a thorough non- or even anti-essentialism. Drawing primarily on three themes of economy, civic identity and uses of space, the volume shows that urban development, and responses to it, is not gender neutral and thus argues for the fundamental importance of a gendered perspective.
Gender in the European Town is a useful resource for all students and scholars interested in urban history and its interaction with gender from 1650 to the present.
Author(s): Deborah Simonton
Publisher: Routledge
Year: 2022
Language: English
Pages: 416
City: London
Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Table of Contents
List of Figures
List of Tables
List of Plans
List of Images
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Gender and Urban identities
Urban Economies
Civic Identity
Space and Place
1 Absolutism and Enlightenment: Urban Belonging
Belonging and Identity
Gender, Enlightenment and Belonging
Towns, Mobility and Meaning
2 Urban Economies
Visualising the Urban Economy
Towns, Artisans and Crafts
Urban Worlds of Commerce
Constructing the Businessman
Gender and Urban Family Business
Women Entrepreneurs
‘They May Depend on Being Well and Readily Served’
Claiming Their Place
3 Civic Identity and Governance
Power in the Cities
Exercising Civic Authority
Performing Civic Identity
Popular Voices, Popular Agency
4 Places and Spaces
Enlightenment and Improvement
Reconstructing Towns
Streetlife
Sociable Spaces
‘Going shopping’
The Disorderly Town
5 Bourgeois Century: Shifting Parameters, Shifting Meanings
Forces for Change
Gender Ideology
Towns and Migration
Mobility and Belonging
6 The Transformative Urban Economy
Economic Change
Representing Urban Business
Gender and Family Business
Women Doing it for Themselves
Urban Artisans
Servicing the Town
Gendering the Urban Economy
7 Politics and Civic Identity
Gender, Class and Political Voices
Municipal Political Reform
Urban Associations and Philanthropy
Workplace Politics
The Community Voice
8 Shaping Towns
The Shape of Towns
Town Halls and Toilets
Transport and Gender
Constructing Homes
Domestic Space
9 Streets, Sociability and Consuming the Town
Walking the Streets
Shopping as Practice
Parks and Recreation
Sociability and Networking
10 Re-imaging the City in the Twentieth Century
Urban Europe
Revisiting Gender
Moving Stories
11 Civic Impulses
Finding Women’s Voice
Masculinity and Class
Shaping the Town
Tea and Sandwiches
12 Work in the Modern Town
The Modern Urban Economy
Gender in Urban Factories
Servicing the City
Homeworking
Entrepreneurship and Business
Claiming Places
13 Living in Towns
Re-imagining the Town
Architects, Design and Planning
The Urban Home
The Interior Home
Response and Reaction
14 Navigating Urban Spaces
Access to the City
Cars, Bikes and Pavements
Recreation and Leisure
Shopping
Walking the Streets
Sex and the City
Gendered Spaces
Coda: Imagining the Town, Past and Present
Selected Bibliography
Index
