Gender & the built environment q-another hmmmm..

Ok, i'm taking two classes this semester (the other thread was inspired by the Transport & planning class) and this q comes from the Diversity & Cultural Planning lecture today.

Do you think that society really expects women to be "superwomen"? I guess this question could be based on the idea that the "city" is designed for men & the suburbs designed for women?

Also, do you think it's true that men are uncertain of thier role in society?

I love these two classes & can't wait to go full time next year! Who knows what questions will pop up on te :rolleyes:

I think in the Man's world (in my grandfather's day) - there are servants/underlings no matter what his station in life, there is always someone under him. So the business man had people working for him, and wifey dear took care of the home. There might have even been household staff. But he had staff and was used to that. And to a certain extent that still holds true today - white collar job holders have staff. Most men do not, and will not clean houses. Mow the grass yes, dust the livingroom or vacuum no.

An aside - I was grumbling in the bathroom at the office about having to go home and clean my house, while Sarah one of the building cleaning ladies was cleaning the bathroom. She said - "Don't you have someone to do for you? All you ladies have someone to do for you, I can't believe you do for yourself."

Anyway back to the topic at hand. In the Women's World - the house has been our pervue and still is. So working outside the home is just added to the list. Are we superwomen? I don't know, but statistics has shown that women do more work - if they hold down a 40 hour job, they still have the household to run.

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Originally Posted by crazycanuck

Do you think that society really expects women to be "superwomen"? I guess this question could be based on the idea that the "city" is designed for men & the suburbs designed for women?

Also, do you think it's true that men are uncertain of thier role in society?

I love these two classes & can't wait to go full time next year! Who knows what questions will pop up on te :rolleyes:

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Before I answer to cc's, bccmcosland- some men do want to/tend to clean in terms of household. My partner is like that. He is a neat person.


Crazycanuck, interesting about city designed for men or suburbs ..well, I've had women I know personally who after moving to the suburbs with their children and hubby found suburbs more isolating. One Tawain woman, from Hong Kong moved with her Canadian born hubby and 2 teen children. They bought a beautiful house in suburbs (Surrey). She likes house but hates driving everywhere. She and her family lived in Hong Kong for several years where she loved having everything close and to bring her children along. Hubby told me...she loves our area where we live downtown.

Interesting questions. I don't know if society expects women to be superwomen, but I think there IS an expectation that if a woman works outside the home, that job can't in any way interfere with her ability to keep a nice house and raise her children well. In other words, the home and kids are still the top priority for women and the main thing they are judged by, while men are still judged primarily by their jobs outside the home. Both genders are openly admired for what they do outside of those expectations (men who "help" with household chores more than usual, or who attend the parent-teacher conferences, or women who excel in their careers) but only if they also are successful in their primary role. People who flip the gender roles around by having the man stay at home and keep house and take care of the kids while the woman goes out to work just confuse the heck out of society in general. These couples don't exist in television commercials (btw, I think the portrayal of people in television commercials is the best indicator of what society expects of people--someone trying to sell you something is always going to show the world how the majority of people want it to be or expect it to be).

Bottom line: a person of any gender is going to be judged positively if he or she is successful at the expected primary role and is going to be judged negatively if he or she is unsuccessful at this expected primary role no matter how successful he/she is at the other role. This is something my husband and I are living out every day right now. He's unemployed and I work full time outside of the home, but for years he's always been the one at home (he worked third shift) and I've been the main wage earner. But if something happens to one of the kids at school, they call me first. They KNOW (or should by now) that I'll always tell them to call DH since he's at home. Bad housekeeping? Clearly my fault. Doesn't matter that DH is at home all day; bad housekeeping reflects badly on me (and my mother tries very hard not to be openly critical of me, but it comes out anyway. She loves me and knows this is a stupid standard, but she can't seem to help herself).

But I don't think the city is designed for men and the suburbs for women. Quite the opposite, actually. The suburbs are socially isolating and difficult to navigate. They add to a woman's workload (bigger house = more housework; greater distances between places = more time spent running errands) and particularly when the suburbs started really growing between the world wars (this is all in the US, btw--I don't know any of the history of the suburbs anywhere else) and even more with the explosive growth after WWII, they confined women and narrowed their world. It wasn't normal for a woman to have access to a car or know how to drive until the 1960's, so if you lived in the suburbs, you were really stuck. Certainly some women did drive, but it was unusual (as was owning a second car--even if a woman could drive, usually the family car would be used by the man to get to work). Living in the city was easier for women--stores and churches and post offices were all within easy walking distance. Friends were close by, and usually family as well--adult children would live in the same neighborhood and sometimes the same block as their parents. The suburbs, on the other hand, are a symbol of material wealth. The desire to own property isn't just a sign of upward mobility, but goes way back to a man's worth in society--when the US Constitution was written, only white male property owners could vote. That pretty much stayed in place until about 1850, when the property restriction was taken away but voting was still only allowed to white males. I don't think it's entirely an accident that the suburbs started growing just about the time most voting restrictions disappeared, and certainly a lot of the growth of the suburbs in the US is a result of "white flight" from the cities after desegregation.

I've gone on way too long here and haven't even gotten to the question of whether or not men are confused about their role in society! Maybe I should shut up now and get back to that later.

Sarah

Is this just a trick to get us to write your essays????:p

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Originally Posted by Bruno28

Is this just a trick to get us to write your essays????:p

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Interesting point. :p

And SFA's about urban neighborhoods makes a lot of sense.

It's not one of our assignment topics! :rolleyes: I can do those on me own...

It was just a couple of points I found interesting from our lecture..