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Private Space in Public Transport: Locating Gender in the Delhi Metro
Abstract
Gender has not been fully integrated into the mainstream of either the infrastructure debate or the debate on transport services. This article attempts to locate gender in public transport through an ethnographic study of the Delhi Metro services. Delhi Metro has not only promised women comfortable travel but has also provided private space for them in public transport. Thus a distinct power dynamics has been created, which has reproduced or transformed the internalised meaning of public space for women. A young girl wearing short pants and a T-shirt, lots of junk jewellery, carrying a big casual bag enters the metro station, gets herself frisked at the ladies security check, crosses another check with the use of a smart card (a plastic magnetic strip card used as a prepaid swipe card by frequent travellers of the metro services), waits at the "women only" side of the platform and enters the ladies coach of the Delhi Metro. This is how most of the middle class women are experiencing public transport in Delhi. The metro train which has brought unprecedented comfort to public transport has further added to this comfort by introducing an exclusive ladies coach. The ladies coach has become a phenomenon in the Delhi Metro, promising a safer jour-ney to its women passengers. Experiences of the space provided by the ladies coach in public transport remain unexplored. Based on an ethnographic study, the aim of this article is to locate gender in the Delhi Metro and the kind of space it has provided to its women passengers. It is based on the participant observation on the Delhi Metro over one year during which the informal interviews were con-ducted with women passengers.
... service quality, demand and route coverage) and patriarchal societal 3 norms. In South and Southeast Asian countries, PT services are composed of formal services (mostly 4 train and bus services) and informal, para-transit, services (such as rickshaws, tuk tuk, boat-taxis and 5 motorized three-wheeler vehicles) (Gopal & Shin, 2019;Rahman, 2010;Tara, 2011). PT provides a 6 common space which require users to be in very close proximity to each other, due to over-crowded 7 ...
... With leading international organizations 25 emphasizing gender mainstreaming over the past two decades, were these initiatives and strategies 26 successful in improving mobility for women in South and Southeast Asian countries? The review is 27 undertaken from three aspects, including a concise discussion on the key barriers faced by women when 28 using both formal and informal PT modes (Section 3); a review of issues and limitations of common 29 methods (Section 4); and examining the effectiveness of international guidelines for women's travel on 30 national policies in South and Southeast Asian countries (Section 5). Lastly, Section 6 concludes with 31 knowledge gaps for future research and recommendations for transport policy-makers. ...
... This disproportionately 26 affect women as they prefer to travel during off-peak hours (Tarigan et al., 2014). Most women do not 27 have an alternative choice and need to make multiple trip-chains using informal modes despite the 28 proportionately higher cost in comparison to formal modes ( The barriers discussed in this section on women's travel conditions are against basic rights and 47 freedom by limiting women's ease of access to necessities such as employment, education, and health 48 care facilities (Thynell, 2017). The consequences of these mobility barriers have left women to remain 49 as second-class citizens, hindering their progression in society. ...
Women in South and Southeast Asia encounter unique mobility barriers which are a combination of poor services by public transport modes and underlying patriarchal societal norms. Although international organisations provide guidelines for national policy makers to develop inclusive public transport systems, women’s mobility remains restricted and unsafe. This paper provides a critical review on women’s mobility barriers from built-environment to policy for public transport ridership. It includes three main aspects. Firstly, the key barriers encountered by women from poor service quality, sexual harassment and patriarchal societal norms. Secondly, the limitations in common methods adopted to measure these barriers. Finally, the effectiveness of international guidelines and national policies on women’s travel needs for public transport ridership. Findings revealed that women’s mobility barriers in South and Southeast Asian countries originate from the lack of adequate inclusive policies and protection laws from authorities. The underlying patriarchal societal norms form a toxic base, which allow for severe forms of sexual harassment to take place when riding public transport and for women to experience victim-blaming, if the incidents are reported. The paper concludes with knowledge gaps to assist practitioners and researchers to move toward safer journeys and development of inclusive public transport systems for women in developing countries.
... These spaces, gender-blind in their creation and continuity, have been marked by daily violence against women in different forms (Datta, 2016). The city has seen measures centering on providing safety to women in public spaces and transport through strategies of surveillance and protection (Gopala and Shin, 2019;Butcher, 2011;Tara, 2011;Sadana, 2010). These include initiatives such as reservation of coaches in the Delhi Metro for women, gender sensitisation programmes for the staff of DTC buses, self-defense classes organised by the Delhi Police, and recently, the free bus tickets for women to travel in public buses. ...
... Studies on women and public transport have explored themes around safety, ability to travel on one's own, women-focused transport initiatives, reasons for women's travel choices, and the role of existing transport infrastructure in contributing to women's travel experience (Ola Mobility Institute, 2019;Jagori and UN Women, 2011;Butcher, 2011;Tara, 2011;Sadana, 2010). These studies have shown links between gender, age, poverty, and disabilities in shaping access to transport (Ceccato, 2017;Shah et al., 2017;Loukaitou-Sideris, 2014;Agrawal and Sharma, 2015;Anand and Tiwari, 2007). ...
Urban mobility infrastructures are crucial in connecting people to a city and the prospects it provides. Through a critical review of literature on growth of cities in South Asia, transport initiatives and policies, and the existing transport situation, this paper highlights barriers which impact accessibility to transport and thus, ridership. As Delhi gears up to become the world's most populated city, how does its transport infrastructure fare in enabling users' ease of movement and providing opportunities to access work, education, healthcare, and social life? The paper explores how challenges to access transport are a result of interactions between several inter-sectional factors. These include an individual's social and spatial position in the city, role of transport policies in shaping road-based transport, and Delhi's growth in the form of urban sprawls which has resulted in uneven distribution of and access to services. At the core of these inter-linked factors lie the users through whom the challenges or opportunities to access transport become operationalised. By highlighting transport-related constraints, including who is considered a user and who is not, this paper pushes for more inclusive discussions on the future of transport planning, and interventions for improving accessibility. Identifying opportunities for actions and addressing gaps is imperative as Delhi witness's continuous growth and migration. This review of existing transport literature is beneficial for policy recommendations and strategies for meaningful change.
... The research undertaken provides scope for investigating how public spaces offer spaces for liberation and emancipation for women, as opposed to being viewed merely as a site of fear before the 1990s, which marked a shift in feminist urban studies (Bondi & Rose, 2003;Sima, 2016;Phadke et al., 2011). There is existing academic literature on public transportation mobilities in the Global South (Behrens, 2016;Cervero, 2014), the influence of Metro or other light rail intra-city projects in developed nations (Lemon, 2000) and developing nations (Lee, 2007), in Delhi by engineers (Mohan, 2008;Tiwaty, 2013) and social scientists (Sadana, 2010(Sadana, , 2021, some of whom have even tried to disseminate the elitist nature of urban planning (Shukla, 2023), and pointed out the lacunae of gender not being integrated into the debate of public transportation concerning the Delhi Metro (Tara, 2011). However, there is a lacuna within the existing academic scholarship which overlooks the way gendered space is played out right outside the metro stations as the Metro "was built as a stand-alone artifact" (Sadana, 2021, p. 7), and the absence of solutions by the State opens several avenues of commuting to the metro stations. ...
... Similarly, other studies covering countries such as Japan [48], Mexico [54,73], India [74], Brazil [75], Malaysia, Egypt [76], and Nepal [5] show relatively positive appraisals of previous measures in these spaces (e.g., women-only subway cars, buses, and/or cabs, along with social awareness campaigns) to prevent sexual harassment and violence against women. However, other studies state that, although these types of measures can still be potentially effective if correctly conducted, females' self-reported data tend to consider surveillance cameras and increased police patrols more effective, subsequently linked to a lower degree of fear of crime [47,48]. ...
Background
Despite being neglected for several decades, and in many countries, public transport environments have transformed into a reflection of social disparities and inequalities. Among these issues, harassment–a pervasive and worldwide gendered dynamic–has been demonstrated to negatively impact women’s behavioral trends, daily opportunities, and health impacts, as well as safety and security outcomes.
Aim
This systematic review aimed to examine a set of studies analyzing harassment against women in public transport environments, with a focus on key issues such as its prevalence, impact on transport dynamics, preventive strategies, and policing avenues documented in the scientific literature.
Method
A total of 575 indexed articles were filtered using the PRISMA methodology, resulting in a final selection of 28 original articles directly addressing the issue up to December 2023. Search strategies were developed and implemented across WOS, Scopus, NCBI, Google Scholar, and APA databases.
Results
Besides high frequency, widespread underreporting, and adverse effects on women’s safety, this review has identified correlations between harassment and travel behavioral adaptations. Furthermore, it reveals a noticeable disparity between the existing measures and those perceived as more effective by potential victims. These findings underscore the pressing need to listen to and promote the inclusion of women in decision-making regarding transport affairs.
Conclusion
The findings of this systematic review suggest that, despite a slightly limited body of research, the impact of transport harassment on women’s health and welfare is consistently supported in the literature. In addition to being largely explained by existing inequalities rooted in social determinants, transit harassment further exacerbates gender gaps, gaining prospective importance for transport settings.
... In doing so, the article seeks to initiate discussions on travel time use in the urban Indian context, specifically with respect to gender. While there is literature on gender and public transport that focuses on the aspect of safety (e.g., Bhidem, Kundu, and Tiwari 2016;ITF 2018), and literature on ladies' compartments as gendered spaces allowing the performance of gender in particular ways (Tara 2011), there is a need to examine how specific travel time activities contribute to our understanding of gender, mobility, and gendered mobilities. This also helps to eval-uate the performative aspects of both mobility and gender as they influence each other. ...
... A growing body of literature has examined how women negotiate this women's only space. While Tara's (2011) work focuses on how women perform femininities in the ladies' compartments of the Delhi Metro, Bagheri (2019) draws attention to women's compartments in the subway in Tehran and how women wield power and shape their space, despite the overtly patriarchal intent behind segregation. In the context of Mumbai local trains, Bhide, Kundu, and Tiwari (2016) have conducted a mixed methods study to explore the issues faced by women commuters. ...
The local trains of Mumbai are one of the most crowded means of public transport, but often preferred by many women due to the provision of exclusive ladies’ compartments reserved for women. While these compartments provide women a space safe from sexual assault, conflicts due to class and religious differences arise among the women who occupy this in-between space. Moreover, the continuous use of ladies’ compartments leads to the labelling of general compartment as gents, affects the interactions between men and women in different railway spaces, and also configures the public as already segregated according to a binary understanding of gender. Based on the findings from an ethnographic study of women’s experiences of using the ladies’ compartments, I argue that the provision of segregation gives rise to specific ‘mobility practices’ in the ladies’ compartments. The logic of segregation spills over to other railway spaces, and these can complicate our understanding of mobility as empowering for women travellers.
... Beyond the boundaries of Delhi, they now reach Noida, Ghaziabad, Gurugram, Faridabad, Bahadurgarh and Ballabhgarh (Delhi Metro Website 2021a). It has ushered in a new era in the sphere of gender-sensitive means of mass transit through specific provisions for safety of women passengers, like reserved seats for women in every coach; women CISF staff for frisking of female passengers; CCTV surveillance at stations, etc. Introduction of an exclusive lady's coach was an additional important measure which received public applaud (Tara 2011). ...
Availability of safe, reliable and affordable public transport facilitates access to work opportunities. This relationship between transport and economic independence is not gender neutral. Delhi’s Metro Rail Network marked a milestone in this regard as it provided a gender-sensitive means of mass transit with specific facilities for women passengers. However, the onset of Covid-19 pandemic, followed by restrictions on mobility and change in working habits, brought the urban public transport network to a standstill. Given this background, the paper explores the impact of Metro Rail Network on the commuting pattern and preferences of working women in Delhi-NCR region as well as the travel-related challenges faced by women that were magnified during the pandemic.
... This limitation is noticed in the mainstream literature on public transport. For example, Tara (2011) states that "gender has not been fully integrated into the mainstream of either the infrastructure debate or the debate on transport services". Scheiner and Holz-Rau (2012), argue that "gender has played an important role since about 1980, when the issue of 'women and transport' entered the field. ...
... Children up to 12 years old are allowed on these coaches when they are accompanied by female passengers. This reserved coach accommodates a total of 361 passengers, 43 seated and 318 standing, the same as all other coaches (Tara, 2011). The barrier to entry for men is a 250 rupees (US$4) fine. ...
In response to the rapid rates of urbanization and motorization, cities in the developing world have increasingly invested in urban rail transit systems in recent decades. Using participant observation and in-depth interviews with 51 female passengers in the Delhi Metro, we provide empirical evidence of the impact of rail transit on women's lives in the developing world, which is lacking in the existing literature. We adopt the notion of empowerment as a theoretical framework. The findings of the study reveal that the Delhi Metro provides a comparatively empowering and positive travel experience for women, which is mainly enabled by safety measures and women's relative sense of safety in transit compared to other public spaces. However, this does not mean that female passengers are free from the threats of harassment in the Metro, and thus they adopt behavioral strategies to avoid risk. These results suggest that implementing policies that address women's safety concerns and needs are key to mass transit's success in the developing world.
... Habermasean public sphere of rational discussion, and the domestic/familial sphere where face-to-face contact with each other is the norm, a "space in which the private becomes a matter of public debate" (ibid: 128), an "intimate public" (Berlant 2009) upheld by the veils of anonymity and fleetingness of participation. Not only do such parallel mediascapes open up avenues for public intimacy to be reconfigured, as I will explore in Chapter III through the Mumbai "beef ban" and "meat ban" incidents in 2015, but urban, cosmopolitan megacities in India harbour many semi-public spaces where (semi) strangers congregate and dissociate in fleeting anonymity -for instance, roadside chai (tea) stalls (Chakrabarty 1999), public train carriages ( Kusters 2017;Tara 2011), the mall ( Phadke et al., 2011), the office canteen (Chapter VII), and home food catering services (Chapter VIII), spaces with distinct rules and modalities of gendered, caste, and class-based sociality and kinaesthetics, which neither fit neatly within the Habermasean dichotomy of "private" and "public" (Kaviraj 1997), nor the Indic, purified spaces of "home" and "outside", as envisaged by Chatterjee. ...
This Ph.D. examines how commuters in Mumbai, India, negotiate their sense of being and wellbeing through their engagements with food in the city. It focuses on the widespread practice of eating homemade lunches in the workplace, important for commuters to replenish mind and body with foods that embody their specific family backgrounds, in a society where religious, caste, class, and community markers comprise complex dietary regimes. Eating such charged substances in the office canteen was essential in reproducing selfhood and social distinction within Mumbai’s cosmopolitan environment. These engagements were “visceral” since they were experienced in and expressed through the intimate scale of the gut, mediating and consolidating boundaries between self and Other on lines of (incommensurable) food habits. Such tensions, most visible between vegetarians and meat eaters, were aggravated in the wake of the “beef ban” in March 2015, which illegalized the slaughter of cattle in the state of Maharashtra, wherein cosmopolitan pleasure gave way to visceral disgust and estrangement. In connection, this thesis examines the vast work-lunch economy of Mumbai through three prominent businesses: the Dabbawalas, a 125-year-old home food delivery network; tiffin services, informal catering businesses operated by housewives, who commercially hybridize homemade food; and tech food start-ups, run by a generation of young entrepreneurs striving for novel takes on homemade food. Whereas anthropological literature on India has analysed either the emergence of a new urban public sphere since India’s economic liberalization, or the ripples it has made in the domestic sphere, this thesis examines how these businesses address commuter specific bio-moral anxieties of maintaining communal identity, purity, and wellbeing within the stressful environment of contemporary Mumbai, by means of mediating domestic intimacy with the urban public, at an affordable price. These interventions are conceptualized as “technologies of purity”, specific forms of visceral politics of food.
... Tara (2011), in an ethnographic account on the Delhi metro provides a different account of the experiences of women in the metros. She says that Delhi Metro has not only promised women comfortable travel but has also provided private space for them in public transport. ...
This article explores the multiple factors that contribute to women’s contested access to urban space. It tries to do so by concentrating on the experiences of women in Indian cities on two important aspects: i) use of public transport, and ii) public toilet. These two aspects illustrate the presence of a wider politics of control, surveillance and security that negotiate the visibility of women. Presence of public transport like buses, rickshaws, metro and trains is important for emphasising inclusivity of women. Similarly another tangible symbol of inclusivity is the presence of public toilets for women. But in both cases, experiences of women in urban India belie their expectations. While 21st century India makes its claims towards building ‘world class cities’, in reality this city remains unfriendly to women at multiple levels, causing not only physical violence but symbolic and psychological violence too. Based on the findings of field research from different parts of the country and supplemented by the narratives of women from the city of Burdwan, this paper tries to unmask the situation.
... The major reason that women travel is to get to work or a place of education (Behrens, 2004;Tara, 2011). Their travel behaviour therefore relates to the location and forms of available employment-formal, informal, part-time, unskilled, self-employment (Momsen, 1991;Hanson, 1996;Hanson and Pratt, 1995). ...
Mobility is experienced differently by women and men, as they use different modes of transport for different purposes and in different ways depending on their socially determined reproductive, productive, and community related gender roles. Women's transport needs in south Asia are hardly sufficiently documented, let alone adequately addressed by transport planners and providers. A literature search was undertaken of the data bases, Google Scholar, JSTOR: Journal Storage, SpringerLink, SCOPUS and GEOBASE for papers published for different years. The search terms were 'gender', 'transport', 'mobility', 'travel behaviour', 'Transport Poverty', 'public transport accessibility and affordability', 'transport facilities', 'disadvantages', 'transport constraints', 'public transport'. The literature review revealed the unique barriers regarding transport accessibility as well as transport disadvantages that face urban and rural women in south Asia. This systematic review will help transport planners identify, design, and assess gender-responsive transport projects in order to solve the transport burden of south Asia.
... The major reason that women travel is to get to work or a place of education (Tara, 2011). Their travel behaviour therefore relates to the location and forms of available employment-formal, informal, part-time, unskilled, self-employment (Hanson, 1996;Hanson & Pratt, 1995). ...
In cities all over the world, growing numbers of women are working or studying further away from home than ever before. This article presents policies by the World Bank and recommendations by the United Nations to improve conditions for women's mobility in cities. Although these stress different factors affecting women's experiences of traffic and transport, they all agree about the importance of enabling women's mobility. However, gender-sensitive policies have been largely unsuccessful. This article presents examples of conditions for women in New Delhi and other rapidly growing Asian cities that illustrate how gender norms operate. This study uses the perspectives of development research and gender studies to examine economic and political initiatives and the way women act and interact with transport in local contexts. It facilitates critical reflection upon existing transport policies and suggests 'how' women's needs may be effectively addressed. More in-depth knowledge about women's needs and the problems they face when travelling will be useful for designing of policies that address more than simply the harassments of women. More inclusive urban access would enhance conditions for women and enable them to make choices according to their needs. In this way, social science and policy will cross-pollinate one another.
... In a context where the domestic or private domain is often considered the most desirable place for women, the reservation of a coach for women in the Delhi Metro can be seen as efficacious primarily because, it is in some senses, a re-creation of a private space albeit in a public context. Apart from signalling the undoubted increase in travelling comfort and safety for women that this step has allowed, academic writings on this issue have thus dealt with how the reservation of a coach for women has paradoxically allowed the public-domestic dichotomy 8 to resurface within a public space (Tara, 2011). Such practices, sometimes referred to as forms of 'portable purdah', 9 are both, a reminder of the continued existence of a larger patriarchal and misogynist social order at the same time as they are arguably a necessary means for women to have greater spatial mobility within such a society. ...
This article argues that there is a need to address how policy measures, such as, gendered segregation of space in public transport, reconfigure gender relations in such spaces. On the basis of a small survey, personal observations and blogs published online, it is suggested that new areas of gendered confusions and exclusions in the use of the Delhi Metro are sharply emerging in response to reservation of a coach for women. These confusions and exclusions are giving rise to notions of legitimate and non-legitimate gendering of spaces, which allow men to make new claims on public space. Notions such as these derive from entrenched ideas about overcrowding and differential needs. Such contestations deny women an unambiguous right to the reserved space and also undermine their capacity for negotiating for such rights. It is argued that these are emerging concerns that need to be addressed in a more proactive manner.
The local trains of Mumbai, known for their excessive crowding and
cramped conditions, are a popular public transport system due to the
vast spread of the network and cheap pricing. These trains are also used
extensively by women due to the provision of exclusive segregated
ladies’ compartments. However, women still need to negotiate with
crowds, and push and jostle as they struggle to board and deboard
trains. Through an ethnographic study of women’s experiences of travelling
by trains, I examine how women learn to be mobile and teach
others, such as their children, to navigate the local train system. Analysing
women’s narratives of how they learnt to use trains, I find that teaching
mobility and teaching gender go hand-in-hand, as women simultaneously
internalise codes of appropriate femininity to protect themselves from
physical and sexual harm, but also subvert mainstream femininities, as
they embark on their everyday train journeys.
With its late-night work requirements and prevalence of women employees, the Indian information technology industry is firmly embedded within urban middle-class imaginaries of the mobile woman traversing the city after dark. This article analyses the emergence of the office taxi, a legally-mandated provision to facilitate night-time travel, as a crucial site for the enactment of gendered automobility. Drawing on qualitative research conducted in the South Indian city of Chennai, it explores the textures of women’s mobility by grappling with ‘respectability’, an important analytical framework for unpacking embodied modes of class and caste consolidation. It highlights how corporate and state praxis work together to create the structural conditions of mobility, and examines the multifaceted ways in which women themselves negotiate these measures. Moreover, it interrogates distinctly neoliberal interpretations of the taxi that result in particular forms of gendered (im)mobility. In doing so, it suggests that thinking with and beyond normative frameworks such as respectability can offer new insights into gendered articulations of mobility, work and urban life.
This paper studies how transportation infrastructure projects are dependent on making aesthetic arguments through form, space and experience. It does this through a discourse analysis of the media coverage of the Delhi Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) corridor. Tracing the planning history of the BRT, it explores how it was construed as ineffective, expensive and dangerous. Deconstructing the BRT discourse, the authors make two propositions about the politics of transport infrastructure; its truth claims must be aesthetic arguments, and transformational agendas must be coupled with a distinctive aesthetic. The paper concludes by suggesting that a renewed and situated understanding of aesthetics is critical for urban practitioners, especially in the global South.
Based on an ethnographic study of Afghan Sikh refugees in New Delhi, India, the present paper explores the role of information and communication technologies (ICTs), especially social media, in their lives and practices to survive after the forced migration. The unique identity of being Afghan Sikhs in India is largely unknown, as the notion of Afghans is attached to the Muslims and Sikhs to the Indians. The extant knowledge on literature on their narratives of forced migration and struggles of re-settlement is inadequate. The present paper employs the concept of ‘capital’ by Bourdieu to argue that ICTs enable refugees to gain different forms of capital in their journey of survival in a new country post forced migration. The paper highlights the importance of ICTs being equal to the physical infrastructure for the refugees. The digital practices provide them with a collectively owned capital in the form of relevant information and experiences of being refugees. The visibility enabled by the ICTs has contributed to their social, economic and symbolic capitals.
This paper explores the sociological understanding of land ownership meaning and its consequences for incremental housing policies using Discourse Analysis as a method of investigation of local actors’ perceptions following the eviction of Thapathali slum area in May 2012. Establishing what is meant by forms of tenure arrangements – legal and customary, demonstrates the benefits of studying a situation in which incremental housing failed as an alternative to eviction, informs traditional planning approaches through innovative recommendations relating to legal instruments that create effective rights, and emphasizes the need to anchor housing policies and incremental housing approaches in the social and political context local authorities are dealing with.
Ghana in an attempt to promote GIS use in urban planning initiated the Land Use Planning and Management Information System under the Land Administration Project in 2008. This paper argues that the top-down and nation-wide approach adopted poses great limitations for GIS use at the local level. The study utilizes responses from fifteen District Assemblies to establish current GIS and property rates collection status at the local level and within this context proposes an incremental bottom-up approach that uses existing national systems to promote GIS use in urban planning and property rates collection at the local level in Ghana.
The idea of a "mental landscape" is associated with a spatial understanding of modernity that has long been central to the scholarship on cities and to urban ethnography. In this essay, the focus on space is threefold and includes: (1) the new cultural geography that is created by the physical imposition of the metro edifice on Delhi's landscape; (2) the spaces created within the metro itself (on trains and in stations) and the practices associated with those new spaces; and (3) the spatial imaginaries experienced by individual riders.
Around the world, new spaces and opportunities are emerging for citizen engagement in policy and governance processes. Yet opportunities for participation do not automatically translate into spaces for change. Much depends on the power dynamics that surround and infuse them, shaping who participates, where and with what result. Building on previous work based on the 'three dimensions' of power originally elaborated by Steven Lukes (1974), this article argues that these dimensions or forms of power must also be understood in relation to how spaces for engagement are created and the places (from local to global) in which they occur. Understanding each of these - the spaces, places and forms of power - as themselves interrelated dimensions, each of which has at least three components within them, these dimensions are visually and analytically linked together in a 'power cube'. This framework, the article argues, can be used to assess the possibilities of transformative action in various settings.
The purpose of this article is to advance a new understanding of gender as a routine accomplishment embedded in everyday interaction. To do so entails a critical assessment of existing perspectives on sex and gender and the introduction of important distinctions among sex, sex category, and gender. We argue that recognition of the analytical independence of these concepts is essential for understanding the interactional work involved in being a gendered person in society. The thrust of our remarks is toward theoretical reconceptualization, but we consider fruitful directions for empirical research that are indicated by our formulation.
In this essay, I paint a portrait of women in public places and their concerns with crime prevention, based on a survey of the literature and in-depth interviews with women. I argue that there is a situationally appropriate self that crime-prevention advice literature suggests women adopt and that women attempt to adopt. This situated self, however, is sometimes constrained by the general character of public places and by the particular character of the belief system that women have and that the literature recommends with regard to crime prevention. In particular, I view normative beliefs about crime prevention as a “rhetoric” that involves negative contingencies for the woman's situated self in public, including frequent reliance on others, self-profanation, and lengthy or consuming preparations.
L'A. porte son attention sur les retraites et sur les seminaires destines a ameliorer le niveau de formation des enseignants mis en place a Chautauqua dans l'Etat de New York en 1874 a l'initiative de l'Eglise methodiste. Ces seminaires etaient largement ouverts aux femmes. La pratique des loisirs, encouragee dans ce cadre, permettait de nombreuses rencontres entre hommes et femmes. L'A. examine les programmes de formation proposes dans ce cadre.
Building on the work of Foucault, Giddens, Jameson and Lefebvre, one of America's foremost geographers argues for a radical rethinking of the dialectics of space, time and social being.
.In modern industrial society, as apparently in all others, sex is at the base of a fundamental code in accordance with which social interactions and social structures are built up, a code which also establishes the conceptions individu. als have concerning their fundamental human nature. This is an oft stated proposition, but until recently its awesomely ramified significance escaped us. The traditional sociological position that sex is "learned, diffuse, role behavior" - fair enough in itself - seemed to have innoculated previous generations of social scientists against understanding instead Of allowing the disease to spread. More even than in the matter of social class, these students simply acted like everyone else, blindly supporting in their personal conduct exactly what some at least should have been studying. As usual in recent years, we have had to rely on the discontented to remind us of our subject matter. It is these issues I want to try to approach, doing so from the perspective of social situations and the public order sustained within them. (I define a social situation as a physical arena anywhere within which an entering person finds himself exposed to the immediate presence of one or more others; and a gathering, all persons present, even if only bound together by the norms of civil inattention, or less still, mutual vulnerability.)
Anthropological Exploration in Gender: Intersecting Fields
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DTC Partners with Jagori on the Safe Delhi Campaign
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DTC Hires Women Conductors
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Re-Mapping the Public: Gendered Spaces in Mumbai
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