Women and the city : gender, space, and power in Boston, 1870-1940 / Sarah Deutsch.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Deutsch, Sarah.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Massachusetts.

Massachusetts--Boston.

Women--Massachusetts--Boston--History.

Women.

Women in community organization--Massachusetts--Boston--History.

Women in community organization.

Women in public life--Massachusetts--Boston--History.

Women in public life.

Spatial behavior--Massachusetts--Boston--History.

Spatial behavior.

Urban women--Massachusetts--History.

Urban women.

Physical Description:

xi, 387 pages : illustrations, maps ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

New York : Oxford University Press, 2000.

Summary:

In the 70 years between the Civil War and World War II, the women of Boston changed the city dramatically. From anti-spitting campaigns and demands for police mothers to patrol local parks, to calls for a decent wage and living quarters, women rich and poor, white and black, immigrant and native-born struggled to make a place for themselves in the city. Now, in Women and the City, historian Sarah Deutsch tells this story for the first time.

Deutsch shows how the women of Boston turned the city from place with no respectable public space for women, to a city where women sat on the City Council and met their beaux on the street corners. The book follows the efforts of working-class, middle-class, and elite matrons, working girls and "new women" as they struggled to shape the city in their own interests. And in fact they succeeded in breathtaking fashion, rearranging and redefining the moral geography of the city, and in so doing broadening the scope of their own opportunities. But Deutsch reveals that not all women shared equally in this new access to public space, and even those who did walk the streets with relative impunity and pretested their wrongs in public, did so only through strategic and limited alliances with other women and with men.

A penetrating new work by a brilliant young historian, Women and the City is the first book to analyze women's role in shaping the modern city. It casts new light not only on urban history, but also on women's domestic lives, women's organizations, labor organizing, and city politics, and on the crucial connections between gender, space, and power.

"In the seventy years between the Civil War and World War II, the women of Boston changed the city dramatically. From anti-spitting campaigns and demands for police mothers to patrol local parks, to calls for a decent wage and living quarters, women rich and poor, white and black, immigrant and native-born struggled to make a place for themselves in the city. Now, in 'Women and the City,' historian Sarah Deutsch tells this story for the first time, revealing how they changed not only the manners but also the physical layout of the modern city. Deutsch shows how the women of Boston turned the city from a place with no respectable public space for women to a city where women sat on the City Council and met their beaux on the street corners. The book follows the efforts of working-class, middle-class, and elite matrons, working girls and "new women" as they struggled to shape the city in their own interests. And in fact they succeeded, rearranging and redefining the moral geography of the city and in so doing broadening the scope of their own opportunities. But Deutsch reveals that not all women shared equally in this new access to public space, and even those who did walk the streets with relative impunity and protested their wrongs in public did so only through strategic and limited alliances with other women and with men. A penetrating new work by a brilliant young historian, 'Women and the City' is the first book to analyze women's role in shaping the modern city. It casts new light not only on urban history but also on women's domestic lives, women's organizations, labor organizing, and city politics, and on the crucial connections between gender, space, and power."--Jacket.

Contents:

Introduction: Reconceiving the city

The "overworked wife": Making a working

class home and negotiating status, autonomy, and the family economy

Work or worse: Desexualized space, domestic service, and class

The moral geography of the working girl (and the new woman)

The business of women

Learning to talk more like a man: Women's class

bridging organizations

We are going to stand by one another: Shifting alliances in women's labor organizing

A debut or a fight?: Class, race, and party in Boston women's politics, 1920-1940

Conclusion.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 291-371) and index.

ISBN:

0195057058

9780195057058

0195158644

9780195158649

9786610539925

6610539928

OCLC:

41482316