Constructive Feminism: Women's Spaces and Women's Rights in the American City

In Constructive Feminism, Daphne Spain examines the deliberate and unintended spatial consequences of feminism's second wave, a social movement dedicated to reconfiguring power relations between women and men. Placing the women's movement of the 1970s in the context of other social movements that have changed the use of urban space, Spain argues that reform feminists used the legal system to end the mandatory segregation of women and men in public institutions, while radical activists created small-scale places that gave women the confidence to claim their rights to the public sphere. Women's centers, bookstores, health clinics, and domestic violence shelters established feminist places for women's liberation in Boston, Los Angeles, and many other cities. Unable to afford their own buildings, radicals adapted existing structures to serve as women's centers that fostered autonomy, health clinics that promoted reproductive rights, bookstores that connected women to feminist thought, and domestic violence shelters that protected their bodily integrity. Legal equal opportunity reforms and daily practices of liberation enhanced women's choices in education and occupations. Once the majority of wives and mothers had joined the labor force, by the mid-1980s, new buildings began to emerge that substituted for the unpaid domestic tasks once performed in the home. Fast food franchises, childcare facilities, adult day centers, and hospices were among the inadvertent spatial consequences of the second wave.

Table of Contents:
Introduction: Spatial Consequences of the Second Wave 1. Feminist Practice: Social Movements and Urban Space 2. Women's Centers: Nurturing Autonomy 3. Feminist Bookstores: Building Identity 4. Feminist Health Clinics: Promoting Reproductive Rights 5. Domestic Violence Shelters: Protecting Bodily Integrity 6. After the Second Wave: Necessary Spaces

About the Author :
Daphne Spain is James M. Page Professor of Urban and Environmental Planning at the University of Virginia. She is the author of How Women Saved the City and Gendered Spaces, coauthor of Balancing Act: Motherhood, Marriage and Employment among American Women, and coeditor of Back to the City: Issues in Neighborhood Renovation.

Review :
"Occasionally a book comes along that fundamentally changes the way we understand the urban landscape. Constructive Feminism is one of those books. Daphne Spain shows the many ways that the Second Wave of feminism has challenged the gendered spaces that long denied women a rightful claim to the public sphere, and in doing so, she makes us see cities from an entirely new perspective."-Dennis R. Judd, University of Illinois at Chicago, coeditor of The City, Revisited: Urban Theory from Chicago, Los Angeles, New York "Constructive Feminism is a compelling read. Daphne Spain tells the stories of Second Wave feminist leaders who established new urban spaces that helped move women toward realizing their full citizenship rights during the 1970s. Her emphasis is on documenting efforts to get gender-exclusive collectives up and running and describing the services and activities women performed and obtained through them, and analyzing their reception and impact. Spain draws on extensive and rich archival sources, and the stories she tells capture the excitement of those heady days."-Mary Corbin Sies, University of Maryland, coeditor of Planning the Twentieth-Century American City