Women, Communities, Neighbourhoods: Approaching Gender and Feminism within UK Urban Policy

Abstract

In recent years some commentators have looked at successive waves of UK urban policy from the perspective of gender, although these commentaries have been somewhat marginal within wider discussions of urban policy and politics. This article seeks to make the case for a renewed emphasis on gender, which moves beyond tracing the role of men and women in relation to urban policy programmes, in two particular ways. First it is argued that a more sophisticated analysis of the gendered nature of urban governance is needed, in other words how forms of gendered labour, subjectivity and power work through and within policy projects; and second that there should be a wider consideration of what feminist visions of cities and politics, both past and present, might contribute to the project of a critical, and hopeful, analysis of urban policy and politics. The paper seeks to make a practical as well as theoretical intervention in relation to gender and feminist perspectives on UK urban policy. It is argued that there has been a silence around such issues in recent years, both in analysis and in policy discourses, and that this silence has masked how gendered labour and power has often been woven into urban governance. For example, forms of women‐centred organising have been relied on in a range of government projects seeking to build community and participation within poor neighbourhoods. Such reliance may be increasing in a context of austerity. As well as this critical analysis of current policy, the paper argues for the reinvigoration of feminist visions of cities that suggest different framings of aspects of urban life. For example, rethinking the lines between public and private spheres might result in different forms of housing or sites of civic participation. Through engaging anew with such perspectives cities might become more just, caring, and equal for all.

Feminist Forays in the City: Imbalance and Intervention in Urban Research Methods

“…Recent feminist research has suggested that it is time to revisit feminist principles in urban studies and (re) notice sexism and patriarchy and to “get angry again” (e.g. Douglas ; Gill , ; Jupp ; Peake ; Valentine et al ). Scholars have also demanded that we pay attention (in non‐voyeuristic ways) to pressing racial inequalities and violences in cities and urban politics (e.g.…”

“…They tend to focus on markets and a narrowly construed state, whereas analytics that attend to everyday life, racialization, gender, subjects and subjectivities, spaces of encounter, the “global intimate”, bodies, households, are marginalized (e.g. Isoke 2013; Jupp ; McKittrick ; Mountz and Hyndman ). Mainstream political economy may unintentionally reproduce binaries (e.g.…”

“…Unfortunately, these nuanced and important arguments may be co‐opted by non‐feminist academics; neoliberalism and other projects hostile to feminism, while gender and race remain a lived reality and intersectionality often lies unexamined (e.g. Cordova ; Crenshaw ; Jarvis et al ; Jupp ; Peake 2015; Walby ).…”

“…It can be valuable for intersectional research to try to sift through how structures of power function in more or less autonomous; synchronous; or contradictory ways, and to consider alliances and affinities (e.g. Cho et al ; Fraser ; Jupp ; Newman 2012; Prügl ; Valentine ). Rather than presume particular relationships, I empirically found that neoliberalism seems to be reinvigorating masculinities along with markets in Milwaukee, deepening white heteropatriarchal power via policy and practice.…”

“…There is value in conscious, if imperfect reflexivity, sustained contact with research subjects and deep, contextualized feminist empirical work and ethnography, as many feminist scholars have advocated. Attention to spatial and temporal difference and flexibility with gendered and other analytic frames used in urban politics is important (Jupp ). However, an FPEP approach challenges an overly‐situated approach, drawing on materialist theories and arguing with Ruth Fincher (:23) that feminist geography should move beyond its “clear aversion to generalizing causes beyond the particular context”.…”