Abstract

Women’s right to the city is one of the most debated issues in scholarship on contemporary and historical urban societies. Access to and control over urban space are key factors in these debates, and underpinning the discussions is the persistent idea that the street is a site for male privilege. This notion is rooted in the problematic assumption that as cities grew and modernized, women swapped the streets for the home. Not only does this assumption lack a firm empirical base (we know very little about gendered patterns of street use),  it is also generally described by mono-causal explanations, foregrounding either changes in gender norms, urban form, migration, or leisure cultures without looking at how such factors interact. During the fellowship I aim to reassess the place of women in the city by studying how street use interacts with the built environment, gender norms, and urban governance across time and space.