Breaking the Gender Code: Women and Urban Public Space in the Twentieth-Century United States

Georgina Hickey

Book

Breaking the Gender Code

Women and Urban Public Space in the Twentieth-Century United States

Georgina Hickey

Language: English

Published/Copyright: 2023

Published by

View more publications by University of Texas Press

To Publisher Page

About this book

A history of the activism that made public spaces in American cities more accessible to women.

From the closing years of the nineteenth century, women received subtle—and not so subtle—messages that they shouldn’t be in public. Or, if they were, that they were not safe. Breaking the Gender Code tells the story of both this danger narrative and the resistance to it.

Historian Georgina Hickey investigates challenges to the code of urban gender segregation in the twentieth century, focusing on organized advocacy to make the public spaces of American cities accessible to women. She traces waves of activism from the Progressive Era, with its calls for public restrooms, safe and accessible transportation, and public accommodations, through and beyond second-wave feminism, and its focus on the creation of alternative, women-only spaces and extensive anti-violence efforts. In doing so, Hickey explores how gender segregation intertwined with other systems of social control, as well as how class, race, and sexuality shaped activists' agendas and women's experiences of urban space. Drawing connections between the vulnerability of women in public spaces, real and presumed, and contemporary debates surrounding rape culture, bathroom bills, and domestic violence, Hickey unveils both the strikingly successful and the incomplete initiatives of activists who worked to open up public space to women.

Author / Editor information

Georgina Hickey is a professor of history at the University of Michigan–Dearborn and the author of Hope and Danger in the New South City: Working Class Women and Urban Development in Atlanta, 1890–1940.

Reviews

Georgina Hickey stands as one of the foremost experts on the history of women and the city. In this much needed and highly readable work, Hickey unpacks and questions the systems of social control that declared urban public spaces dangerous for women and girls during the twentieth century. Hickey examines cities throughout the United States and admirably addresses race, class, and sexuality differences among urban women. Women pushed back against the urban gender segregation that arose in the nineteenth century and the variants of this social pressure that endured throughout the twentieth century. Black women and white women, both heterosexual and homosexual, sought to lessen the impact of the gender code that curtailed their access to public space. Everyone who has traversed the urban landscape will understand the power and importance of Hickey’s timely scholarly contribution. This examination of the past helps us to understand the present and the heated debates about gender, sexuality, and urban spaces that continue within public discourse.

— Lisa Krissoff Boehm, Bridgewater State University, author of Making a Way out of No Way: African American Women and the Second Great Migration

Profoundly important. In charting women’s efforts across the nation to secure inclusion in urban public space over the long twentieth century, Georgina Hickey reveals how fundamental gender segregation was--and remains--to 'organizing and stratifying' American society. While gender segregation constrained white Native-born women in the name of protection, 'it also justified harassment and violence against other women,' particularly women of color, immigrant, queer, and working-class women. This is a major contribution to both urban history and women’s, gender and sexuality studies.

— Tamar W. Carroll, Rochester Institute of Technology, author of Mobilizing New York: AIDS, Antipoverty, and Feminist Activism

In charting women’s efforts across the nation to secure inclusion in urban public space over the long twentieth century, Georgina Hickey reveals how fundamental gender segregation was—and remains—to ‘organizing and stratifying’ American society….[G]ender segregation…’justified harassment and violence against other women,’ particularly women of color, immigrant, queer, and working-class women. This is a major contribution to both urban history and women’s, gender and sexuality studies.

— Lit Hub

An engaging book for every woman ever ordered to smile by a male stranger. . . Hickey's important new volume is certain to provoke vigorous discussion and further research about the challenges facing women in public spaces. . . Highly recommended.

— CHOICE

[Breaking the Gender Code] demonstrate[s] just how omnipresent and persistent questions of gender, space, and power have been in modern urban life. As [Hickey’s] account establishes, even though ground has been won in the struggle against gender segregation, the overarching popular narrative—that women in public are somehow at risk and responsible for their own safety—endures in some fashion to this day…[Hickey’s book has an] engaging style, clear analysis, and relatable themes…[and] I look forward to using Breaking the Gender Code in my own teaching and am sure other historians will as well.

— Journal of Social History

Highly readable and informative, Breaking the Gender Code is essential reading for anyone interested in understanding how women shaped urban public spaces throughout the twentieth century.

— Journal of American History

This book adds an important voice to the history of American urban cities and the role of women within.

— Pacific Historical Review

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Preface Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	1
1 Right and Reason. Understandings of Women’s Presence in the Modern City Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	13
2 Building Women into the City. Infrastructure and Services in the Early Twentieth Century Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	39
3 The City and the Girl. Midcentury Consumption, Civil Rights, and (In)Visibility Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	65
4 When Girls Became Women. Confronting Exclusion and Harassment in the Long 1960s Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	95
5 The Public Is Political. Demanding Safe Streets and Neighborhoods Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	119
6 Taking Up Space and Making Place. Late-Century Institution Building Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	145
7 Privacy in Public. The (Almost) Policy Revolution Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	175
Epilogue Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	201
Acknowledgments Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	213
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	215
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	251

Publishing information

Pages and Images/Illustrations in book

eBook published on:

December 19, 2023

eBook ISBN:

9781477328231

Pages and Images/Illustrations in book

https://doi.org/10.7560/328224

eBook ISBN: 9781477328231

Keywords for this book

gender segregation; American cities; activism; Progressive Era; urban space; rape culture; bathroom bills; domestic violence; gender equity; urban history; gender and race; US history; women in American history; second wave feminism; third wave feminism; LGBTQ rights; Black women in America; civil rights

Audience(s) for this book

For an expert adult audience, including professional development and academic research

Breaking the Gender Code

Overview

About this book

Author / Editor information

Reviews

Topics

Table of contents

Bibliographic data