Week 14: Women in Cities

Our focus in this chapter has been rather selective in that we have not attempted to encompass the entire spectrum of things that urban women are now doing. Instead, we have let the ideas of women’s “thereness” and overcoming of “invisibility” guide our inquiry. We called attention to women’s gains in the paid labor force and how the central issue of occupational segregation continues to set real, although certainly changing, limits on women’s job attainments. Our discussion of women’s participation in community voluntary organizations highlighted the important historical and contemporary contributions that women’s organizations make to the quality of urban life.
Finally, we examined the notion of gendered spaces and women’s place in public settings. As we noted, while urban life, through encounters with strangers, makes for a stimulating and exciting existence, it also poses a serious dilemma for women in terms of safety and sexual harassment. Here, as elsewhere in their urban activities, women are playing a critical role in developing organizations that have influenced how institutions such as the courts, the police, and urban hospitals have responded to women’s needs.

In the final section of this book we want to move to a somewhat more macro, structural analysis of urban life by focusing on some selected institutional spheres, such as politics and sports, that have important consequences for being urban.