Synopses & Reviews
In hundreds of businesses, secretariesusually womendo clerical work in "open floor" settings while managersusually menwork and make decisions behind closed doors. According to Daphne Spain, this arrangement is but one example of the ways in which physical segregation has reinforced women's inequality. In this important new book, Spain shows how the physical and symbolic barriers that separate women and men in the office, at home, and at school block women's access to the socially valued knowledge that enhances status.
Spain looks at first at how nonindustrial societies have separated or integrated men and women. Focusing then on one major advanced industrial society, the United States, Spain examines changes in spatial arrangements that have taken place since the mid-nineteenth century and considers the ways in which women's status is associated with those changes. As divisions within the middle-class home have diminished, for example, women have gained the right to vote and control property. At colleges and universities, the progressive integration of the sexes has given women students greater access to resources and thus more career options. In the workplace, however, the traditional patterns of segregation still predominate.
Illustrated with floor plans and apt pictures of homes, schools, and work sites, and replete with historical examples, Gendered Spaces exposes the previously invisible spaces in which daily gender segregation has occurredand still occurs.
Review
"Daphne Spain makes an important contribution to feminist readings of knowledge and power in this clearly written interpretation of gender segregation in institutional space. Drawing upon recent work in anthropology, architectural history, geography, history, and sociology, Spain argues that spatial segregation parallels status inequalities between men and women. She reads each of these disciplines as one language capable of describing gender differences; each language can be translated into, or correlated with, the others. While concentrating on American colleges and workplaces, she also establishes cross-cultural and trans-historical precedents and analogies. Spain concludes with a call to architecture schools, specifically, and all disciplines, generally to degender space. By 'mak[ing] gendered spaces and their links with knowledge visible' (239) in order to challenge their persistence, Spain hopes to alter imbalances of knowledge perpetuated by spatial segregations. North" Reviewed by Daniel Weiss, Virginia Quarterly Review (Copyright 2006 Virginia Quarterly Review)
Review
Truly interdisciplinary, this work will support studies in anthropology, sociology, architecture, design, and of course gender.
Choice
Review
This fascinating, scholarly examination delves deeply.
Booklist
Review
Fascinating.
Publishers Weekly
Review
Daphne Spain has written an original, challenging and enlightening book.
Michael Kimmel, State University of New York at Stony Brook
Review
Gendered Spaces is a work of vaulting ambition and synthesis.
Catharine R. Stimpson, Rutgers University
Description
Includes bibliographical references (p. [269]-289) and index.