Feminist City: Claiming Space in a Man-made World

REVIEW

FEMINIST CITY: CLAIMING SPACE IN A MAN-MADE WORLD

by Leslie Kern

Review by Sarah Kear

SARAH is a dual master’s student in the Department of City and Regional Planning at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and in the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University. She received her undergraduate degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in political science, gender and women’s studies, and Chicanx and Latinx studies. In her free time, Sarah enjoys running and trying out different recipes.

Verso Books, 2021, 224 pages.

Like being a woman, living in a city as a woman is a double-edged sword. Feminist geographer Leslie Kern delves into the systems of oppression women face in urban areas while acknowledging particular freedoms in Feminist City. Cities may provide better opportunities for women to create community than the suburbs, yet political, cultural, and structural proponents of urban built environments continue to limit and suppress women’s experiences and livelihood. Kern provides a comprehensive look into the multi-dimensional oppression women experience throughout five chapters. Kern does not provide an explicit list of women’s needs for a feminist city but highlights the oppression that limits a feminist city. Similar to previous feminist literature, Kern focuses her main points on her personal experiences while drawing on pop culture and relevant scholarship to bolster her claims.

Kern argues that historically, women are repeatedly seen as a problem in the modern city. From prostitution to the racist stereotype of the “welfare queen,” the modern city’s institutions, which are primarily run by white, cisgender men, stridently impose normative patriarchal family values as a means of regulating the autonomy of women in cities. Victorian era fears of purity and cleanliness are still present and continue to police women through physical, social, economic, and symbolic barriers. Kern further argues that cities are designed to support and promote western, traditional gender roles, where men’s experiences are the “norm” and the barriers that directly affect women are rarely encountered.

Throughout Feminist City, Kern also looks towards the prior research of women in cities when centering her claims of cities possessing the capabilities of suppression and freedom. Kern’s PhD supervisor Gerda Wekerle claims that “a women’s place is in the city.” While Betty Friedan spoke about the value of increased opportunity and community in cities compared to suburbs. In suburbs, women are more harshly subjected to patriarchal family values and are deliberately isolated to keep them attached to the home. Kern uses these claims as a foundation as to why women need cities but also why the systems of oppression need to be abolished.

In each chapter, Kern centers the main points on her own experiences. Kern acknowledges her privilege. She is an educated, cisgender, white woman who does not have similar experiences as other marginalized individuals that also live and navigate in modern cities. Along with her personal experiences, Kern attempts to center the experiences of BIPOC and transgender women yet, at times, these sections read like added commentary rather than a full centering of their experiences. Since the book is largely based on her own experiences, the other voices do not receive equitable space and because of her privileged perspective, it seems that Kern expects readers to be similarly privileged. Through this lens, Kern does take the opportunity to highlight her evolving perspective considering intersectionality while raising the voices of those historically marginalized in feminist and academic spaces.

In one moment, Kern describes her research regarding gender and condominium developments, acknowledging the efforts of organizers and activists. Condominium developers in Toronto market condos as the safest option for women because of security features. Yet, Kern argues that when condos are marketed as “safe” for women, developers