1 10 5 https://nam.maydayrooms.org/files/original/5bf574d5693026e440371fcd5e9efe4f.pdf b95d0da1fa365cae31f41e312ea04a22 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Feminist Group Description An account of the resource This developed a feminist agenda within the NAM critique. Alongside feminist consciousness raising and other feminist political groups, women within NAM came together to develop a feminist understanding of the built environment and building industry. The group acted to advise women in a range of campaigning issues. A special issue of Slate on feminism was produced in July/ August 1978. Emerging from the group was a' Feminist Design Collective' which became ‘Matrix' in 1980, producing the book ‘Making Space - Women and the Manmade Environment', which has been on architecture booklists for 35 years, and the design practice and Technical Aid Centre. <br /><br />The majority of this archive is held at the <a href="http://www.matrixfeministarchitecturearchive.co.uk" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Bishopsgate Institute</a>. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource WOMEN AND SPACE Subject The topic of the resource Letter to those who attended WOMEN AND SPACE Conference inviting them to take part in further activities Description An account of the resource Dear Sisters, WewamtcdtoWritotev€ery “Women un Space’ that came WP folowwe, ana Whice Ank we | magarie ,fom goodtvprintSomeTKS Si i sWww need Wwe women, Iv Showa we to put Part anr/ov the Ferrin 's caom-odp,fvrfopmeoiprlecwhtuGtuna-pieOESKM a Women S womenNi ke4ke Wow Contac nos, Fh Api Frames Aa Nase S315" Sha Framas 609 2976 Jwa Who JL5 F7o3 7775 Hor work core fw hind ve One evrtrovte Stolwve§ Tieinwve.Aopth. ? |,&grup havealvearty Contact: estigating alternatives, het evenyore WI Kew AoE not todisoms making ail Emma HenniowRA.E2. #7 sewardclstone COWwe Wwe W |MrK5 trontareaanhtrytogomtr | Kecxwld Pe Very WtWe a series F paper/sA we shew la pur 7 5yt howl be brtetuwe in conventi Mar Ait ee : Wav. OF iawowrenwe. )4- andtyalosoviintotyneWV Z ; accented notin \w bps bee volved iW setung mM putting; Ohne Wns Came tothe ve become thore Owe VIVES things mk FfHe Conference, win, PeopleWawa tr anchebig(AgtPersrenn Wha vawlh £ tendonay G bands He, Adon Wp i) wat at tre Stage when vb © ere Nee ee yee uae tien ee Ge /bwi / survey ing AC OX Abign Meer Aa pwdovpat We thavger otinv ames asotppeak,3 AadwhineSome— nsequk to have ask W oY 7 OneWA AbwmanOng God Yow possiblyfue - awscwsed .TsWWde, alo oyanvuAeJdONs abovd thr Wav im Alsign i af vA frp ovdem wilh wt Ve Nd LowyWhow 2. Vb Seems Covi ows thar Cane es troquevtoeplesWinch 3 i harbeen Suggertedthar ether an exibition OF ent. Tw wold chamenge the inaSi aga Avewtectwe Gry: y butdng. Theft The ho yad NSee/2 oo eeee i he iAmA a KayJ akToadDeintnaaeOinriteeck ib oS FOS, HE Ca Monday) prBothagainOttaeAIST i, ie Poland St. Nato aiea WL Cinbedhaps Se elaine a Ea Fin hoon mes Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Francis Bradshaw, Sue Francis, Barbara McFarlane, Julia Wilson-Jones Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived John Murray Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 9 April 1979 https://nam.maydayrooms.org/files/original/0e7785b2f74a988297aeef9b3ed29a5a.pdf cf4f9ebb540102c8357cd3b4ff92088c Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Feminist Group Description An account of the resource This developed a feminist agenda within the NAM critique. Alongside feminist consciousness raising and other feminist political groups, women within NAM came together to develop a feminist understanding of the built environment and building industry. The group acted to advise women in a range of campaigning issues. A special issue of Slate on feminism was produced in July/ August 1978. Emerging from the group was a' Feminist Design Collective' which became ‘Matrix' in 1980, producing the book ‘Making Space - Women and the Manmade Environment', which has been on architecture booklists for 35 years, and the design practice and Technical Aid Centre. <br /><br />The majority of this archive is held at the <a href="http://www.matrixfeministarchitecturearchive.co.uk" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Bishopsgate Institute</a>. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource MAKING SPACE WOMEN AND THE MAN MADE ENVIRONMENT Subject The topic of the resource The authors of this book were a group of feminist designers who were part of a NAM Campaign Group Description An account of the resource K.C.E.T.G. GROUND FLOOR DEVONSHIRE HOUSE DEVONSHIRE ST.. KEIGHLEY. 8021 2BH The authors Jos Boys has studied architecture. She is an architectural journal- ist, a teacher, and is currently working in an architecture and plan- ning community advice service. Frances Bradshaw has studied architecture and trained as a bricklayer. She has worked on various feminist and community projects and is currently working for a local authority direct labour department as a bricklayer. Jane Darke has studied architecture and sociology, worked in housing research and teaching, and now works for Sheffield City Council. She has two teenage children. Benedicte Foo has qualified as an architect, taught design, and is now an architect with a local authority and mother of two children. Sue Francis has trained as an architect and carpenter, written an MA thesis, now works with Matrix feminist architectural co- operative, has a small child, and lives with friends in a house they built together. Barbara McFarlane is architecturally trained and has worked as a carpenter. She is currently working for Matrix feminist architec- tural co-operative. Marion Roberts has qualified as an architect, worked in com- munity architecture, and taught social policy and administration. She is now doing research into sexual divisions and housing design. MAKING SPACE WOMEN AND THE MAN-MADE ENVIRONMENT MATRIX Pluto 4~Press London and Sydney First published in 1984 b y Pluto Press LimiiLd, The Works, 105a TOTTiano Avenue, LondDn NW5 2RX and Pluto Press Australia LimiiLd, PO BCIIC 199, Leil:hJuudt, New South Wales 2040, Australia Copyright© Matrix Book Group, 1984 JndividuoJ ropyright © fhe authors COIICI!med Text and cover designed by Ka/1! Hepbum Set by Promenade Graphics Ltd., Chelknham, Glos. Prink!d in Grmt BritxJin by Photobooks IBristol! Limited BoundbyW.H.w~&SonsLimill!d,TweedRood,Clevedon,Aoon ISBN 0 86104 601 3 Contents List of illustrations vi Preface vii 1. Introduction I Jos Boys, Frances Bradshaw, Jane Darke, Benedicte Foo, Sue Francis, Barbara McFarlane, Marion Roberts, Anne Thorne, and Susan Wilkes 1 2. Women, architects and feminism I Jane Darke 11 3. Homes fit for heroines: housing in the twenties I Barbara McFarlane 26 4. Women and public space I Jos Boys 37 5. House design and women's roles I Jos Boys, Frances Bradshaw, Jane Darke, Benedicte Foo, Sue Francis, Barbara McFarlane, Marion Roberts, Susan Wilkes 55 6. Housing the family I Sue Francis 81 7. W orking with women I Frances Bradshaw 89 8. Private kitchens, public cooking I Marion Roberts 106 9. House and home I Benedicte Foo 120 Notes and references 137 Further reading 143 Page Illustrations Page • 1. Local Government Board's house design, 1917 30 • 2. Local Government Board's house design, 1919 33 • 3. Co-operative house design, 1909-13 35 • 4. Urban obstacle courses 42 • 5. Design Guide's view ofsocial interaction 45 • 6. Design Guide's movement patterns for women and children 48 • 7. Design guidance for 'inviting' routes 50 • 8. Design guidance for 'defining territory' 50 • 9. A typical plan of a room 57 • 10. Plan and sketch ofa window 57 • 11. Plan and sketch of a door 58 • 12. Planofstairs 58 • 13. Vertical slice through a house 59 • 14. Weaver's house, 1784-1830 60 • 15. Model dwellings, 1851 62 • 16. Town house, 1864, showing men's and women's rooms 65 • 17. Town house, 1864, showing segregation of servants and family 66 • 18. Early twentieth-century terraced house 68 • 19. 'Garden City' cottage, early twentieth century 70 • 20. Semi-detached suburban house, 1930s 73 • 21. Council house, 1940s 75 • 22. Nuclear house, 1960s 77 • 23. 'Mr and Mrs Average' 83 • 24. 'Activity zones and sequences' 84 • 25. 'Time and activity chart' 86 • 26. Health Centre plans 93 • 27. Women's training workshop 94 • 28. Children's Centre plans 95 • 29. ModelofChildren'sCentre 98 • 30. A wartime British Restaurant 110 • 31. London civic restaurant, 1949 116 Preface The authors of this book belong to a group of feminist designers col- lectively known as Matrix. We are women who share a concern about the way buildings and cities work for women. We work as architects, teachers in higher education, researchers, mothers, a builder, a journalist and a housing manager. Working together on this book was for most of us a first chance to develop ideas about buildings with other women; and we have learnt a lot from each other. In our paid jobs some of us have chosen to work with women; others work with men. Most of us live with men, three of us have children and about half of us live in collective households. We did not set out to be a consciousness-raising group, but have brought individual experience of the women's movement to a group whose common ground is involvement with buildings. Many of us were members of the New Architecture Movement in the late 1970s. NAM was a mixed group of socialist architects together with some students, teachers and builders. It was con- cerned to make architects more accountable to those who use build- ings and questioned the relationship between user and architect, and to a lesser extent (but important for some of us) that between architect and builder. A feminist discussion group emerged and organised a conference in March 1979 called 'Women and Space'. The conference attracted about 200 women, and some men from a variety of backgrounds. Though interest in the subject was evi- dently great, there was very little published work then available. This gave some of us the idea of meeting regularly and eventually to produce a book. From unstructured exploratory discussion we moved in the autumn of 1980 to more formal meetings where we discussed in depth the ideas each woman was working on. Some women devel- vii Making Space oped themes arising from their research interests, some analysed aspects of architectural practice and others talked directly from their experience of childcare and how they lived. Three members of the group produced an exhibition called 'Home Truths', developing the theme of women and the design of houses. Partly in response to outside interest in our work, including requests for speakers, we formed an umbrella organization known as Matrix, which com- prised wom11n working on the book and the group involved in archi- tectural design and in producing the exhibition. Some of us were involved in all the projects. Our intentions were to work together as women to develop a feminist approach to design through practical projects and theoretical analysis, and to communicate our ideas more widely. Our training and our work in Matrix have helped us to look critically at the way our built surroundings can affect women in this society. These skills have been useful to us, and we want to share them with others to help us all develop an understanding of how we are 'placed' as women in a man-made environment and to use that knowledge to subvert it. viii Acknowledgements Although most chapters in this book are by individual authors we have all benefited from the collective comments of the group. Susan Wilkes and Anne Thorne contributed much advice, support, criti- cism and encouragement. We also warmly thank Clare Herniman and Sylvia Thorne for typing, and for their constructive criticisms of earlier drafts, Pippa Gladhill, Judy Attfield, Madeleine Ray, and Paul Crane ofPluto Press. We would like to acknowledge the follow- ing for permission to tise copyright material: Liz Millen for the photographs reproduced in chapter 4; the GLC Department of Archi- tecture and Civic Design for the illustrations from An Introduction to Housing Layout, 1978, reproduced in chapter 4; the Controller of Her Majesty's Stationery Office for the illustrations from Spaces in the Home, 1972, and Housing the Family, 1974, reproduced in chapter 6; and the GLC Photographic Library and the Trustees of the Mass Observation Archive, University of Sussex, for the photo- graphs reproduced in chapter 8. Some of us have helpers to thank: Jane Darke to Emma Hen- rion and Roy Darke; Barbara McFarlane to Judith Alien; Sue Fran- cis to Sunand Prasad, Frances Bradshaw and Jane Darke; Marion Roberts to Alan Lipman and Madeleine Arnot; Frances Bradshaw to Liz Millen and Jessica Datta. Benedicte Foo would like to thank Mike Jones for his encouragement to keep struggling with the chapter, Aleda Erslieve for providing her flat as a haven of peace and quiet for thinking and writing, and her mother Rosalind Foo and Kim and Kate without whom this piece would never have been written. She would like to thank Alexi, Linda, Caroline, Sue and Val for talking so openly and in such detail about their arrange- ments for and feelings about childcare, housework, cooking, getting about and family and friends. ix 1. Introduction This book is about women's relationship to buildings and to the spaces between them - our created surroundings, including homes, their arrangement in relation to one another, to public spaces, transport routes, workplaces and the layout of cities. Our built or created environment is made in accordance with a set of ideas about how society works, who does what and who goes where. A woman's place? Consider your own surroundings. If you are reading this at home. for instance, you are probably in almost the only place where you can impose something of your own individuality on your environ- ment, limited of course by money, by space and time, by whom you live with and how, and by whether or not you own the place. Because home is the only place with this potential freedom we value and strive for it. But for women there is another side. We will be judged by the quality of environment we can make, by neighbours, relations and friends - even if this is in circumstances over which we have little control, like a badly designed or 'sink' estate or a cramped 'starter' home. Behind every woman is the image of the 'ideal home'. The ideology of domesticity, which describes how things ought to be and ought to look, will always affect what we do even when we are react- ing against it. The home is also a retreat, a place removed from outside press- ures where we can relax and be 'ourselves'. It makes a physical boundary between the environment we can control and the seemingly uncontrolled world outside. For most employed men, this physical boundary makes a clear mental distinction. Outside it they Making Space work; inside it they are at leisure. For women this division is much less clear- the world does not fall into such a neat pattern. There is, after all, a lot of work to be done in the home. As women it is assumed that we will be ultimately responsible for the upkeep and general maintenance of our homes whether we have another job or not. Again, we will be judged by the quality of our housework, how- ever successful or hardworking we are in other spheres. Even when others contribute to this work, the primary responsibility remains with women. We are conscious of its demands at all times; responsi- bilities cannot be shut off by retreating into a 'room of one's own'- within traditional nuclear families there is no real privacy for women. Every woman who has children knows both the pleasure of bringing them up and the isolation that passes for privacy, the con- stant commitment that leaves no space or time to oneself. Some do not even have a semblance of separation from other individuals and families; they have to suffer overcrowded conditions and noise booming through paper thin walls and floors. The pleasure that many of us get from our homes carries certain contradictions. The fact that within the home women have a greater degree of power than they have outside it reinforces the assumption that a woman's place is in the home. Man-made world The initial decisions to build are made by those owning or having control over large sums of money. Even such a sma1l building as a house costs the equivalent of several years' average earnings. A building may be commissioned by a future user- for example a firm wanting a factory or office for their own use or a client inviting an architect to design a house. It may be ouilt as a speculative venture without a particular user in mind. or it may be commissioned on behalf of the users. The latter is the case where the state is client for schools, hospitals and council houses. The client or developer is nearly always a man or a committee consisting almost entirely of men. simply because very few women occupy positions of power in organizations and because men own or control most wealth. The cli- ent or developer will probably brief an architect- about 95 per cent of whom are men 1 - who helps them to clarify their requirements and then designs a building or scheme to meet these needs. The architect may alter the scheme in the light of comments from the client and others, but it is extremely unusual for architects to make any attempt to consult those who will actually use the buildings. Professional codes of conduct and 'normal practice' do not encourage them to do so. Jane Darke in 'Women, architects and fem- inism' shows how difficult it is for women in the profession who are trying to establish their own credibility to challenge these norms. The site will be subject to planning restrictions - the number of houses allowed, the floor area of an office or factory, the arrange- ments for access and parking, the appearance of the buildings in relation to their surroundings and so on. The scheme must also com- ply with building regulations. There must be proper sanitation, ven- tilation and means of fire escape. These constraints on the freedom of the client and architect are intended to ensure that the interests of the public are safeguarded. The planners and local councillors who make and apply these rules are, like architects, usually male. They do not necessarily promote their own interest at the expense of women's, but they may not have considered whether different sec- tions of the population have different environmental needs. Lack of consideration may show itself at all levels of decision-making, from the layout of kitchens in council houses, or public buildings made inaccessible to people with prams or wheelchairs, to the whole rela- tionship between home, workplace and other facilities which may affect women differently to men. Women's voices are not heard dur- ing this decision-making process which is supposed to ensure that building development takes place in a socially responsible way. When both the client and the local authority are satisfied with the architect's proposal, arrangements will be made to build the scheme, using an almost all-male workforce. In short, women play almost no part in making decisions about or in creating the environ- ment. It is a man-made environment. · Opposition to this aspect of male domination must occur in the context of other challenges to conventional views about women's roles. Demands for change have taken various forms at different times. The present women's movement can provide the stimulus for challenges to men's power to determine the environment. This book is one such challenge. An earlier example, from which we can draw lessons, of feminist influence on the arrangement of buildings occurred during the first world war. In 'Homes fit for heroines', Bar- bara McFarlane shows how the approach taken by a government Introduction 3 Making Space women's committee was influenced by the women's movement of that time and in turn modified designs for post-war housing pro- posed by the government. Outside the home Women's independence is severely restricted outside the home. Ifwe walk on the streets after dark, we are accused of inviting violent sexual attack from men. If we do not have cheap and convenient public transport, we are physically restricted since most of us cannot afford a private alternative. If we are with our children we are made unwelcome in pubs, shops, restaurants and public buildings. Recent urban planning has provided us with a cold, alienating environment in which buildings have become free-standing 'objects' lost in a sea of unusable open space, disconnected from each other and linked by roads which merely serve the function of getting from A to B as quickly as possible. Modern cities have been planned to segregate different aspects of life; homes, shops, factories and offices are all in separate areas. This segregation has affected women more than men, because our lives have never been so neatly partitioned between the different areas of work, leisure and home in the way that men's have. Jos Boys, in 'Women and public spaces', shows how the ideal ofa home physically separate from the workplace reinforces a division of labour by gender inside and outside the home by tying women more closely to a locality than men. She shows how this idealized separ- ation has affected the appearance and layout of contemporary hous- ing estates even in the inner city to keep women 'distanced' from the public world. Much of our environment has been designed on the basis of stereotypes of women's and men's work, their respective 'proper' locations and their relative importance. The arrangement of cities, the distances between homes, workplaces, and other buildings rein- force the assumption that workers are men, working for most of the day away from the home with little or no responsibility for its day- to-day running and for childcare. It is assumed that women don't work outside the home and that they do look after homes and chil- dren. But only a small number of households conform to this pat- tern. Less than a third of households consist of a husband, wife and dependent children, and in more than half of these the mother has a 4 paid job outside the home.~ About one in nine of all households con- sists of a man with a paid job, a woman without one, and children under the age of 16. What's wrong with modem architecture? Our criticisms of the arrangement of buildings and cities have been influenced by ideas from two sources. One is the women's movement over the past 15 years; we assume that readers have some familiar- ity with feminist ideas. Our own collective assumptions are explained in a later section. The other influence is the growing criti- cism of modern architecture. For about 20 years after the war there was a collective confi- dence among architects. New needs and social patterns, born of war- time devastation and the will to reform, required new buildings. Architects took their theories about design from the Modern Move- ment. The form of a building, it was believed, should be derived from its functions, and its exterior should suggest what went on inside without resorting to stylistic clothing borrowed from the past. New technologies and materials also created new possibilities for built form. Offices could be built with walls entirely of glass; the job of supporting the structure would be done by columns set back from the facade. Large, unencumbered spaces could be constructed using steel, concrete and plastics. Using concrete, buildings could be made higher than before to provide more homes within a given area. For about a generation architects were given a great deal of freedom to build their vision of the new society. Gradually it became apparent that architects' grandiose theor- ies did not fit the way oflife that people wanted to follow. The forms of buildings were influenced by economic and political pressures rather than social needs. In the pursuit of profit, speculators tore down urban landmarks that local people had held in affection. Councillors were easily persuaded that their city needed a more modern image. Politicians believed that the massive housing prob- lem would be solved by the use of new materials, factory-made com- ponents and mass construction of standardized units. The results were characterless office blocks and disastrous 'streets in the sky', where people were supposed to have their homes. High-rise flats were and are acceptable to some households. But the grim appear- ance of much high-rise housing has come to symbolize all that is Introduction 5 Making Space wrong in modern architecture and its narrow view of social needs and aspirations. The crisis in architecture was not a purely professional turmoil. Community groups started to protest about poor housing and the siting of roads and important buildings. Articles and television pro- grammes portrayed the mistakes of architects and planners. Archi- tects reacted to this loss of public confidence in different ways. Some architects, aware of the danger of professional remote- ness, tried to democratize design and make their skills more avail- able to tenants and community groups. Radical groups of architects, economists and planners discussed such questions as the reason for building a particular structure, for whom and by whom it is built, how the production of buildings is connected to the workings of a developed capitalist economy and the effects of building and plan- ning on the lives of ordinary people. These debates were important in developing our critical perspective on architectural practice. However, we came to realize that although these radical groups accepted some of the ideas of the women's movement, there was a gap in our understanding of architecture and building design from a feminist point of view. We believe that the question of what has 'gone wrong' with modern architecture cannot be discussed adequa- tely without an awareness of the invisibility of women's lives to the professionals who plan buildings and cities. The chapters that follow develop these ideas. A feminist response At the same time as small groups ofsocialist architects, mostly men, were discussing the relationship between the architect and society, a broadly based feminist movement was questioning assumptions about women's place in society and the 'natural division' between the sexes. This book draws on discussion and action in the women's movement. For women have also taken action which makes demands upon the environment. 'Reclaim the Night' marches have demonstrated women's anger at men's appropriation of parts of the city where women's bodies are exploited. Campaigns for community facilities have made clear women's real need to break out of the iso- lation and individualization of housework and childcare. Women's Aid have demanded safe places for women to go to escape from 6 violent male partners. During the Yorkshire Ripper murders women in Northern England protested at police suggestions that they shouldn't go out at night and instead proposed a curfew on men. We have also drawn on the debate about the nature of house- work3 and on a growing number of studies that examine the rela- tionship between women and the environment. In Britain, Leonora Davidoff and Catherine Hall have been particularly important; so too is the work of the Women and Housing group. We were also encouraged by the publication of work by American feminists. Gwendolyn Wright and Dolores Hayden have written about women's involvement in ideal communities in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and about nineteenth century feminist ideas about housing and housework.4 Others have written about the effects of post-war urban planning and the growth of suburbs on women, and about women and homelessness.5 As feminists we share the objective of challenging the subordin- ate position of women. Among feminists there are differences ab'but whether the liberation of women can take place without a revolu- tionary transformation of society, about whether gender or class is the more significant factor in the oppression of women (and hence whether middle-class women have any identity of interests with working-class women), and about whether it is realistic to hope for a change in the behaviour of men or for men voluntarily to relinquish their privileges. Within our group there are differences ofopinion on these issues, but we have some understandings in common. These are that the divisions and antagonisms between men and women are social and not biological in origin. There are, of course, physical differences between men and women. But this biological division has been transformed into social constructions of gender- 'masculi- nity' and 'femininity'. We do not accept that because females bear children they are unable to mix mortar and lay bricks. Nor do we accept that males who are able to design buildings are somehow incapable of cleaning lavatories and changing nappies. What men and women do for most of their lives is a product of social structures and expectations, not of biology. We believe, however, that precisely because women are brought up differently in our society we have dif- ferent experiences and needs in relation to the built environment which are rarely expressed. There can be little doubt that men gain in current definitions of 7 Introduction Making Space masculinity and femininity. Men enjoy higher status, a higher stan- dard of living and personal service at the expense of women. We think these privileges should be undermined by giving women equa- lity of opportunity. However, there are very positive aspects to the socializing experience of women. We think that men would gain from having a more caring role in society. Males have dominated in almost all societies for almost the whole of recorded history, but this domination has taken different forms at particular historical times. For instance, capitalist methods of production removed some types of productive activity from the home and so reinforced the male notion that women should be protected from the harsh world of business and 'work'. 'House Designs and Women's Roles' analyses a series of plans, mostly of types of house in use today, to see what assumptions are made about family life and the role of women in the home. In 'Housing the family', Susan Francis dissects the stereo- typed image of the family, and of women in particular, that are seen in design guides written to advise architects on house plan- ning. Feminism and architecture We have not produced a blueprint for a feminist architecture. When we talk to individuals and groups about our work, we often get asked what feminist design would be like, whether women design different sorts of buildings from men. or what should be done to design buildings more sympathetic to women. Some people have imagined that women design round. curving buildings, while men build phallic towers. We have come to see this as a caricature of what feminist design might be. There are no instant answers to these questions. This book has not been written to provide architects with a do-it-yourself feminist architecture kit. We are not prescribing the solution; we are describ- ing a problem. so as to help women understand their own relation- ship to the built environment and to help architects understand how the environment is a problem for women. Feminist architects are trying to take account of women's experience. and to respond to other feminists' initiatives. In 'Work- ing with women', Frances Bradshaw describes the work of the Matrix Design Group which works primarily with women's groups. R We feel that radical building design and research start from per- sonal concerns, from a growing awareness that our man-made sur- roundings are not neutral, that there is some sort of contradiction between the lived experience of many women and the particular physical patterns that our built surroundings make. For instance, a chain of symbolic associations, 'private, home, warmth, stability, comfort', are literally built into a physical setting, set in direct oppo- sition to 'public, competitive, aggressive, stimulating', in a way that does not accurately describe the realities for women and often obscures other possible relationships which might suit women better. Marion Roberts, in 'Private kitchens, public cooking', looks at experimental communal restaurants run by the state during the second world war. She shows how these upset conventional nine- teenth- a,nd twentieth-century oppositions between public and pri- vate, by turning eating and the provision of meals into a public affair and a public service for the first (and only) time in this country. We can learn from these alternative experiments but they do not provide any easy answers. There may for instance be a contra- diction between the needs and desires of many women now, and longer term aims. For example, we argue for more childcare facili- ties now to ease the burden on women of looking after children. But this does not mean that we think women should be solely respon- sible for children. We look in the long run to a more equal concern between women and men for looking after children. We do not believe that the buildings around us are part ofa con- spiracy to oppress women. They have developed from other priori- ties, notably the profit motive. The property boom ofthe early 1960s helped to transform many inner-city areas into single function areas, which became lifeless and dangerous when the workers rettirned home, and where the quality ofinternal and external space for users and members of the public was hardly considered. Even buildings designed by architects with strong political or social intentions have often misinterpreted women's needs. There has been a benign but false assumption that all sections of the popula- tion want the environment to do the same things for them. Buildings do not control our lives. They reflect the dominant values in our society, political and architectural views, people's demands and the constraints of finance, but we can live in them in Introduction 9 Making Space different ways from those originally intended. Buildings only affect us insomuch as they contain ideas about women, about our 'proper place', about what is private and what is public activity, about which things should be kept separate and which put together. But this does not determine how we live. Just as language contains and perpetuates certain ideas about women, so do buildings, but in a less direct way·. As feminist architects and designers we want to avoid the architectural determinism that sees building-users as puppets, capable of being manipulated according to the architect's idea of desired behaviour. The arrangement of space in and between build- ings is a reflection of accepted views which may have a greater or lesser effect on the occupants - or which may have unintended effects on social life in general. We have tried to avoid assuming that our experiences and views are universal. Even though we hope to speak of all women's experience, we are directly limited by our own history. All of us have come through higher education, mostly with a training in architecture, and thus fit into the conventional definition of the white, middle class. We have all felt angered by male domination at work and in cities and we believe that our experience is a common one for women. We hope this book will help women to understand how the man-made environment fails to.work for them and will start some ideas about how things could be different 10 2. Women, architects and feminism There are two questions we are often asked: do women architects design differently from men, and if not, why not? My argument is that architects are out of touch with those who use their buildings, and that their professional training is part of the process that removes them from many of the people they design for. Architects who are women, and/or come from a working-class background, have to acquire an outlook similar to that of middle-class males, the dominant group in the architectural profession.1 This is why we shouldn't expect buildings designed by women to have any qualities distinct from those designed by men. The possibility of women architects adopting a different attitude depends in part on the existence of a feminist movement, and on whether the movement stresses the problems of women in general or only those of a limited group. The consciousness of women architects in the past has partly reflected the state of the women's movement at large, so the recent growth in awareness of feminist issues may offer a new potential for feminist design. Buildings and the spaces in and around them affect women's lives both physically and through the ideas they express, that are literally 'built in' to them. The physical effects on women are clear enough. For example, a house may be awkwardly arranged, so that it creates extra work; the distance to facilities may be excessive and the route to them may expose us to danger; once there, we may not be able to use certain facilities because they are inaccessible to wheelchairs or pushchairs. Over and above these material prob- lems, there may be social constraints on us as women - where it is 'appropriate' to be, at what time and with whom. Even if your local library is accessible to pushchairs, you may still face disapproval if you take small children in. We are allowed into pubs alone, but once 11 Making Space in we have to behave in a certain way if we are not to attract unwanted attention from men. Separate zones for home and work tell us that we are meant to compartmentalize our lives in this way. All buildings we use have particular ideas built into them about what and who is important and who is not. Some men can show their status in the home with a study - a room of their own. Often 'women's' rooms, such as the kitchen, are small and placed well away from the public world of the street. The relative size and impressiveness of rooms and buildings, the relationship of spaces to each other and the people whose convenience is given priority all help to define what is normal, what is better or worse in our society. If a block of council flats looks like a filing cabinet or prison, we are right in thinking that this carries ideas about the status of people who live there. The built environment is oppressive for many women, in ways that we do not yet know how to explain. What is more, the form of this oppression changes through time and with place, and the indi- vidual woman's experience of it varies according to factors such as class, race, personality and sexual preference. Who is it, then, who patterns a particular set of social relation- ships into the physical environment? In almost all classifications of social class, architects are placed in the highest category, along with other 'highE'r professionals' like doctor&, lawyers and business execu- tives.:.~ Figures for architects' earnings show that these far exceed average earnings. Becoming an architect To become an architect requires a lengthy period of higher edu- cation; school-leavers who pass into universities and polytechnics are overwhelmingly from middle-class backgrounds. The process of training student architects does not normally bring them into con- tact with building users. It is unusual for students to be brought face to face with a real client. Nor does the training encourage students to become aware of the gaps in their knowledge of a wide range of lifestyles, or to fill these gaps. The main method of learning to design buildings at a school of architecture is to start with a small. simple building and gradually work up to more complicated problems over the five years of a course. There are lectures on aspects of building design but the 12 design exercises are the core of the course. The students are encour- aged to work in the studios within the school, where the tutors can wander among the drawing boards and discuss the students' ideas for the building as they develop. The sources of ideas may include meetings with imaginary client, visits to other buildings or searches through magazines for relevant previous schemes, and possibly the use of design guides like those discussed in chapter 6. Talking to ordinary users of buildings is not a routine part of the process. The tutors are similar to the groups that dominate the architec- tural profession in general: the majority are white, middle-class men. Talk over the drawing boards includes a hidden curriculum on how to behave as an architect, with anecdotes about the eccentrici- ties of well-known practitioners or their cavalier attitude to clients. (Architects resent their dependence on clients, just as some doctors hate patients. The client has to be 'contended with', especially in the case of a committee-client such as a hospital board or housing com- mittee.)3 A figure half-ridiculed and half-admired is the 'prima donna architect' (usually male) who convinces the client that it is a privilege to have secured his services and who feels free to subordin- ate the client's requirements to his own flights of fancy. This arrogance may be tolerated or even encouraged by the pro- cess of evaluation of student projects, which takes place at a 'crit' where the tutors, assisted perhaps by visiting 'experts', comment on each student's proposals. The student is expected to explain and jus- tify her or his decisions in the face of questions and criticisms; to defend the decisions made rather than to admit that they may have been based on insufficient knowledge. Students thus learn to con- struct plausible rationalizations rather than to recognize their own weakness. The production of beautiful drawings may become an end in itself or a means of disguising the defects in a scheme rather than a means of showing that the student has understood the problem and arrived at a reasonable solution, using particular arrangements and methods of construction. The attitudes of architects Once the student is qualified, the norms for discovering the needs of future building users on real projects are vague. There is no pro- fessional pressure to ensure that the designers ofpublic sector hous- ing, for example, have close contact with existing council tenants. Women, architects and feminism 13 Making Space On a research project, I asked some architects of recent, acclaimed public sector housing schemes what they thought of council ten- ants.4 Their replies revealed the tremendous gap between them- selves and the users of their buildings. I sort of wonder whether there is a kind of subculture of people about whom one knows very little ... people that have moved out of very tough working-class areas . . . who just have differ- ent expectations, they don't have the sort of middle-class expec- tations that one is thinking they're going to have ... Ijust don't know. They lavish attention on their houses; they're very very good tenants, most of them, in GLC and local authority housing. I'm always being absolutely staggered at the way they occupy [a housel ... I went into some ofthe big family units, one or two of the black ones and an Irish one, and they've done them up very well, I mean bizarre tAste of course, most extraordinary coloured carpets and things like this, but very well. And they've covered all the lousy tiles that we had to put in with close car- peting, fitted carpets, and big television sets: you name it, they've got it ... There's one old woman on the ground floor who's a born complainer ... when I asked her how she liked the flat she said, 'Oh, inside it's all right but this is like a prison,' and we were in the street you see. and I thought 'Oh Christ, it doesn't look like a prison to me. but if it looks like a prison to her, she's probably got nearer to a prison then I ever have.' Big families are a killer on these sites. they are the main source of vandalism. these big families. We've come to the conclusion that if one ever got the programme again with big families, they somehow ought to be put in a corner by themselves where almost they don't have access to the rest of the building ... I think big families tend <to bel ... They arejust problem fami- lies. lnterl'iewer: Do you think there are extra problems for families like that on 'streets in the air' rather than streets on the ground? No, I think that whatever you did with them they are problems, stop. That is. they make their own problems. I think actually 14 the only thing society might do to help such families is probably try and persuade them to go back to more rural areas where the unkempt kind of life can be less damaging to the younger chil- dren. Y ou can't help feeling they'd be far better off in Ireland on a peat bog, running about with chickens. The last speaker was more extreme than most of the architects I interviewed; the first speaker was more typical in the way that some lifestyles were seen as an uncertain, unknown quantity. Only one of the seven architects I interviewed came from a working-class back- ground. I was brought up in a very high density, low income, South London, typical stress area, in which I can remember the prob- lems of pure screaming kids and prams and bad weather and balconies and railings, all those things produced, even as a child. This architect's approach to housing design was shaped by such memories in a way that was much more difficult for the architects who lacked that experience. Their housing schemes, not sur- prisingly, reflected their lack of understanding. The scheme by the first speaker was carefully designed around what he assumed to be the needs of young children and their mothers, with small blocks of fiats for old people scattered among the family houses. A lot of the women in the houses feel they don't have enough privacy; the old people in the fiats feel isolated; and there is considerable tension between young and old. The second speaker's scheme really did look like a prison. It was based on the designer's image of gregarious, working-class street life, but the design was such that people suf- fered their neighbours' noise through walls and floors; again there was conflict between different age groups, and little sense of com- munity. The third scheme was a concrete slab, ten storeys high, con- sidered hideous by almost all the residents, most of whom want to leave. The speaker's reference to a high rate of vandalism was accurate, but there was no evidence that it was caused by large families from Ireland. Women architects Have women architects brought to their work a consciousness that women's socially defined role is problematic? If so, it might open the Women, architects and feminism 15 Making Space possibility that their schemes could recognize women's needs better, that their schemes will be perceived as less alienating and oppress- ive than the 'man-made environment'. This is not likely to come about unless there is some evidence of feminist consciousness in women architects. By pursuing pro- fessional careers some have escaped at feast partially from conven- tional women's roles. If they wish to combine a career with marriage and parenthood they are liable to experience strain in the combi- nation of architect, mother and wife which is not usually present for architects who are also husbands and fathers. See for example the account and diaries of the husband-and-wife partnership referred to as 'The Bensons' in Dual Career Families, first published in 1971.5 The Bensons' domestic and work lives are closely interleaved, in part because the home and office occupy different floors in a single house. On a typical day Mr Benson gets up at 9 and works in the office from 10 until 7 with breaks for lunch and tea. Mrs Benson gets up at 7.55 and carries out a variety ofhousehold chores before start- ing work in the office at 11.40. The rest of her working day is inter- spersed with domestic activities. She bears by far the greater responsibility for running the home, and the nature of this work is such that it constantly interrupts her architectural work. Mrs Benson does not appear to resent her dual burden or the fact that her participation in the work role is more limited than Mr Benson's. Marriage and children are very important to her; she 'would have died if she hadn't married'. Mr Benson had 'conven- tional' male resistance to being tied down. Mrs Benson dislikes machines, does not drive, and leaves technical aspects ofdesign, 'the plumbing and structural hardware'. to her husband. She specializes in interiors and colours. Mrs Benson illustrates one way of adapting to the role of woman architect: one which challenges other aspects of the female role as little as possible. Although the combination of roles may be a strain, it is seen as a normal price to pay, a personal issue, not as re- flecting a problem in the way social roles are defined. In effect this type of career woman can deny that the women's movement has any value. Mrs Benson says that she respects masculine men and 'can't stand the first whiff of a reversal situation'. Other women architects who spoke about their situation, in a special issue of Architectural Design on women and architecture in 1975, voiced similar senti- ments.u One woman thought that the 'women's issue' is altogether 16 overrated when it comes to architecture and other professions. In fact, she feels that undue attention paid to women in certain circum- stances tends to denigrate their achievements, and she wants to have no part in the women's movement. Later the same woman described her priorities, in a household in which a large number of individuals apparently depend on her, both she and her husband having children from previous marriages: I know I'm lucky because I've got an enormous amount of physi- cal energy. I rarely get tired other than nervously. The most important role I play is being a wife ... Physical energy is no problem, doing the washing and the cooking and the shopping. OK, it's like having a dinner party every night for 8 people: it's actually just a technical problem; you alter your getting up times and you can cope with that sort of thing. It's the require- ment of mental energy, I think, to make everybody feel they're important. A former colleague of hers took a similar line: In architecture the problems of women's lib do not exist. In short, any woman who wants to be can be, full stop ... With two boys nuw 7 and 9 and a built-in aversion to au-pairs this has meant an involvement in the practice which is wholehearted but not whole time ... There's never enough time for every- thing. I do indulge in jazz dancing classes, guitar lessons, movies and some, but not enough, travel. Not to mention toys like paper kites, cassette tapes and cookbooks. Others are slightly more willing to admit the possibility of a prob- lem: Combining career/family has been constructively traumatic. It has meant 1) paying people to replace myself- six hours a week housework, 20 hours a week childminding . . . 2J using my friends; 3) knowing that when all seems lost, something will turn up. I am finding career and family totally exhausting: at it seven- teen hours a day and nothing really well done . . . The unplanned arrival of my third has thrown a tremendous burden on my family. Childminding . . . is the biggest problem, for which society offers little or no help. Women, architects and feminism 17 Making Space Some of these designers may identify with the situation of women as users of architect-designed buildings; others would probably dismiss the suggestion that women experience particular problems, as they dismiss the problems of women as architects. Similar attitudes have been described by Margherita Rendel: Girls who are of unusual ability and commitment should be allowed to pursue their interests, enter professions, become scholars, have careers, but they are very exceptional. This is the modern version of the Nun. To follow a career requires, it is thought, a genuine sense of vocation ... Women who pursue careers must be careful how they do it. They must not lose their femininity or become intimidating or formidable. They must be better at the job than men, but should be .content with the opportunity to have a career and the satisfaction of the work itself rather than to receive recognition. Those women who are very exceptional may be accepted into the male establishment. Such a woman becomes, as it were, a male by adoption . . . Some women adopt this role with so much enthusiasm that they wish to be the only woman to play it ... They have been called Queen Bees. Those women who have been eo-opted to the male elite, but who are permitted to argue gently and occasionally on behalf of their sex may be called Token Women and those women whose place in the male elite is precarious - who must all the time consider whether they are going too far - may be called Precipice Women. Many of the women in the situations described by these labels believe that because they have 'made it', other women can too ... These women in no way challenge the existing distribution of power or means ofaccess to power.7 The consciousness of women architects must be understood in a historical and social context, in the light ofchanging attitudes to the role of women. 'Mrs Benson' and most of the women architects quoted above began their careers in the post-war period but before the revival of the women's movement which started in the late 1960s. This was a time of consolidation of the gains made by the first women architects, but the social climate was such that to break new ground would have been extremely difficult. 18 Women architects in the past There have been attempts to recover a lost feminist tradition in some areas of knowledge or branches of the arts. For example, women scholars have studied the work of women writers and artists to see how their creativity arose from their experiences and social awareness as women, and how they influenced one another. In the USA a group of women have written an excellent account called Women in American Architecture.8 In Britain the history of women architects has yet to be written. If there were women practising as designers in past centuries, their contribution has not been ack- nowledged. Nor do we know of any collective action by women to gain membership of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIB Al. One of the best-known campaigns in the history of feminism is the battle of a few persistent and determined women to qualify as doctors and to have their qualifications recognized. Elizabeth Gar- rett Anderson and then Sophia Jex Blake and her comrades finally won the right to practise. Yet for generations following their victor- ies, women doctors were concentrated in low-status, part-time jobs without prospects. Now, as the numbers of women doctors and medi- cal students rise, there are increasingly strong challenges to this state of affairs. In architecture, there are some parallels with the progress of women in the medical profession, although with a time lapse of about a generation. The first women were not admitted to RIBA until the late 1890s. There may have been earlier women working as architects without belonging to RIBA, because, unlike the medical profession, registration was not compulsory. In 1898 Ethel Mary Charles had passed the RIBA examinations and, according to their statutes, was entitled to become a member. After a long debate, the RIBA Council decided that they would appear more foolish if they excluded her than if they admitted her.9 Ethel's sister, Bessie Ada Charles, was the second woman member and joined in 1900; but there was no great rush to follow them. A third woman joined in 1911, and three more in 1922. RIBA has no record of any buildings designed by their first women members, though Ethel Charles won their essay medal in 1905. Women continued to be a small minority within the pro- fession. Although they may have identified with each other as 'women in a man's world', it would have been difficult for the small number of women architects to take collective action to challenge Women, architects and feminism 19 Making Space either male dominance in the profession, or the current assumptions about the role of the architect. Following the winning of the vote in 1918 and 1928, the charac- ter of the women's movement changed. Sheila Rowbotham says: The women in the thirties who continued to campaign ... con- tributed to the erosion of the pre-war feminist conscious- ness ... Feminism meant more reforms, more welfare, equal pay ... It was no longer in opposition to the structure and cul- ture ofcapitalist male-dominated society ... The liberal femi- nists came to define success as the recognition and approval by the power structure they had opposed. They measured the pro- gress of women in the rise of a minority to competence and the bestowal of honours upon a few. 10 The professional lives oftwo women architects- Elizabeth Scott and Jane Drew- illustrate this change. Elizabeth Scott was one ofa minority of women who gained the recognition of the male estab- lishment; she won the competition to rebuild the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre at Stratford-upon-Avon in 1928. Entries were anonymous; hers was chosen unanimously by the judges. The Shak- espeare Theatre is one of the outstanding buildings of its time. It was conclusive evidence that women were able to perform as well as men in architecture; it did not, of course, challenge accepted ideas about what made good buildings, or whom a building of this type was for. Unfortunately she wrote nothing about her role as a woman architect. Elizabeth Scott was 29 when she won the Stratford competition. She had a rather short subsequent career which included work for Newnham College, Cambridge. She married and took an early retirement in 1939, and died in 1972.11 Jane Drew started her career in the 1930s and continued it after the war, much of the time in collaboration with her husband, Maxwell Fry. Drew resolved as a child not to change her name on marriage, and she supported other women professionals by using their services where possible and persuading her husband to do the same.1~ She is clearly at pains to be a good architect and to investi- gate thoroughly the requirements of those for whom she designs buildings. She and her husband were among the British avant- garde championing the cause ofthe Modern Movement in the 1930s. Yet the position of an accepted and able practitioner seems to 20 have prevented any strong challenge to the norms of professional- ism. It may be that women such as Scott and Drew perceived no need to question these norms. After all, to prove one's competence as an architect to a sceptical world must have been deeply satisfying. Why occupy the dangerous role of Precipice Women when a step over the edge could call into question not only one's own suitability to practise, but also that of other women? The post-war period was in some ways more difficult for women attempting to pursue pro- fessional careers. The ethos of the late 1940s and 1950s strongly emphasized the importance of 'family life'. The Beveridge Report told women that their work as housewives was vital to the nation, l:J and enshrined in the social security system their dependence upon a male breadwinner. Child psychologists stressed the importance to the child of the mother's continual presence. The working mother who had latchkey children was deplored. This was not an auspicious time for women to advance their position in architecture. Like Mrs Benson, they probably considered themselves fortunate to be pursuing a career at all. As women con- tinued to form a very small percentage of all architects, every woman practitioner had to demonstrate anew to sceptical colleagues that she was capable of doing the job. Since the very desire for a career was seen as unnatural compared with the rival attractions of homemaking, a career woman was stereotyped as being hardbitten and masculine or pitiably unmarriageable and frustrated. Yet because a few women had succeeded in the profession, their pres- ence was taken as evidence that there was no barrier to women's acceptance. Any problems were seen as individual ones, and could be attributed to a woman's 'wrong attitude'. Is there a problem? What is the experience ofwomen as students and practitioners? Although not all women feel the situation is problematic, there has been a tendency for more women than men to drop out of courses.14 Women entrants to schools of architecture have a variety of attitudes when they arrive. Some have come from schools and homes in which it is taken for granted that they would go into higher education and pursue a career, possibly irrespective of their own wishes. Others have had to struggle to establish this right, or to deal with careers advisers who discouraged girls from choosing Women, architects and feminism 21 Making Space architecture. They may also have felt themselves under pressure as girls not to seem too clever, especially at science or mathematics. They may not have had the chance to develop useful manual skills like woodwork or model-making. Once in a school of architecture, many of us found it was extremely difficult to identify with a future role as an architect because we never came into contact with women practitioners. If we voiced anxieties about our future role, these were met with a brisk denial of any problem, rather than an attempt to explore our feel- ings. We were aware, to varying degrees, of differences in the treat- ment of women and men students- often difficult to pin down. We often felt that our work was not taken as seriously as the men's. Women students may find they can get away with errors that male students can't- but they will also receive less constructive criticism and help. Tutors may expect women to design 'interesting', 'sensi- tive' schemes rather than bold and striking ones. If they do design a bold project the designs may be reclassified as 'showing hidden sensitivity' or the designer reclassified as 'not really feminine'. There are also pressures from male students and, later, collea- gues who hope that the women they work with might change their behaviour or appearance to fit their own concept ofhow 'girls' should act or look. In some cases their image of women is made apparent through pin-up pictures. Ifjoint work on projects is required, then the relationship must necessarily be closer and the task ofestablish- ing common expectations more delicate. The pressure is on women to prove that they can do as well as men, not on men to adopt quali- ties socially defined as feminine. The norm is a male, middle-class one. Women are subject to discrimination in architectural practice. In private offices, a study by Fogarty and others found that the aver- age earnings of full-time women principals in 1978 were only 63 per cent of those of men. 1'' The gap had actually widened since 1971. Women principals were less likely than men to work in a large office, but there was still a wide gap in earnings when size of office was taken into consideration. It is also more difficult for a woman to become a partner in a practice, since the ideal new partner is in his or her thirties, with a wide network of contacts with potential cli- ents and a willingness to put in considerable unpaid overtime. This is the time when many women take a break to have children, with consequent loss of professional contacts and reduced capacity to work long hours. Architecture is not an ideal occupation for part- time work. If women want to work part-time they may be confined to helping out on other people's schemes rather than designing and supervising schemes of their own, since the latter requires the designer to be constantly available to answer queries and clear up problems. However, problems are not confined to those trying to combine childrearing with a career. The same study found discrimination was evident even against single women without family responsibili- ties. Senior women architects, as well as men, insisted during the study that a woman architect who is determined to make a career in private practice, and stays with it in spite of family commitments, will find the necessary opportunities open to her. In the sense that some women can and do make their way to the highest levels of the private practice side of the profession, this is true. In the sense, however, that women, as a matter ofstatis- tical probability, have the same chance as men of reaching the top, or even of equal earnings at lower levels, it clearly is not ... Myths about the degree of equal opportunity available in pri- vate practice are not surprising in view of the lack over the years of systematic effort to establish what the facts of the situ- ation are. 16 There is also some evidence of discrimination against women in appointments to top levels in local government.17 The study criticized RIBA for its lack of concern to monitor the situ- ation. Valuable though this study is, it shows only part ofthe pic- ture of the discrimination women face. The women who were receiving lower incomes or being denied promotion were prac- tising as architects, so they had accepted at least some of the ground rules of architectural practice. It leaves out those women who dropped out of architectural education or left after a short period in the profession because of dissatisfaction with the way the profession operates. It also ignores those who never reached a school of architecture. Most importantly it takes no account of discrimination against women as building users, which is indirect and unconscious- a product of ignorance. Women, architects and feminism 23 Making Space Future pouibilities Architects may ritually acknowledge the importance ofthe needs of building users, especially those who are most disadvantaged, but in the absence of understanding, contact and empathy with a wider range of people, this remains pious intention. Feminist conscious- ness among architects would produce a change in their approach to design, as women designers came to identify with women using the built environment. The economic recession has had a disastrous effect on archi- tects' work-load. Of the responses to this, only a few can be seen as progressive. The conventional and short-sighted adaptation is as fol- lows. First cut down on recruitment to the office, whether it is in the public or private sector. For private architects, seek work abroad, especially in the oil-rich countries where the rulers are keen to build Western-style status symbols, and the population then have to suffer buildings and city plans devised by foreigners with minimal understanding of either the local climate or customs. Take advan- tage of the relaxation in the professional code that allows you to act as a developer or company director, and broaden your skills to grab work from those in related professions. However, there are also more progressive adaptations to the loss of traditional areas of work. These include a small growth in architectural co-operatives, often working for community groups or organizations which would not normally employ an architect.18 This type of practice is probably more responsive to the needs of many women workers than the conventionally organized office. In addition there are now enough women practitioners who share the kinds of critical perspectives on conventional practice to allow the formation of women-only co-operatives. Some co-operatives offer construction skills as well as design skills, to break down the bar- riers between mental and manual work and to get away from the opponent relation between architect and contractor. One important trend that has helped feminist design groups to survive is the growth of women's groups as clients. With the support of the women's movement and positive action taken by local auth- orities tfor example. the GLC under the auspices of the Women's Committee) women at last have some opportunities to commission or adapt buildings to meet their particular needs. Women's groups, which have worked together using the methods developed in the women's movement- listening to each other, giving each woman 24 space to express her feelings, and developing theories from women's own experiences - will want to work with architects who under- stand and can use the same approach. The existence of a strong women's movement is thus indispens- able to the development of feminist design. Certain material con- ditions would help to carry such ideas back into more conventional architects' office. A commitment to equal opportunities, including facilities like creches as well as monitoring the organization's record in employing and promoting women, is the least that is required. There is a long way to go, but there are grounds for hope that the environment in future will be designed with women in mind. Women, architects and feminism 25 3. Homes fit for heroines: housing in the twenties As women planners and architects think about the ways in which feminist ideas can influence the design of buildings and the urban environment, it is useful for us to look back at the early twentieth century when feminists were organizing a campaign about the way they wanted their houses to be designed. We also want to have a say in how our environment is shaped: whether from general interest, or because we are involved in shap- ing policies on one of the newly formed local government women's committees, or doing feminist research, or as feminist architects working with women to change their local environment. In 1918 the British government setup an all-women committee to report on the 'housewife's' needs in the design of new state-built houses. Traditional gender roles for women were taken for granted. In one way women were being asked for their stamp of approval. It could be said that the emphasis on women's place in the house, keep- ing the home fires burning, was an important selling point for the government's housing policy. However at the time women were alive to feminist ideas, and the committee approached their brief in a consciously feminist way. They asked working-class women what they wanted and in interpreting their views showed they had an insight into everyday struggles. The committee also drew upon ideas of women in the labour movement. 1 The story of the work of the Women's Housing Sub-Committee2 thus throws light on the opinions of many working-class women about their housing conditions in the early twentieth century, and highlights some aspects of how women's 'place' was and is shaped by the design of housing. With victory in sight, Lloyd George's coalition government set 26 Homes fit for heroines: housing in the twenties up a Ministry of Reconstruction in January 1918; this drew in a number of radical individuals such as Beatrice Webb and Seebohm Rowntree. The Ministry's brief was not only to deal with the immediate emergency of large numbers of returning soldiers, but more important, to take a longer view of possible social changes. A massive building programme of new houses was one of those changes - the first time the government was to subsidize, finance and build housing on such a scale. Some historians have shown the way this house building pro- gramme in 1918 was used to undermine potential workers' revolta at a time when, in the words of Beatrice Webb, 'Thrones are every- where crashing and the men of property are everywhere secretly trembling.'4 At the same time, the challenge to the government by feminists was changing. The franchise was extended to women over 30. Femi- nist politics had been developing over the past two decades, but in 1918 there was a lull in the women's suffrage campaign. Many of the notable protagonists were still engaged in the war effort. Others had taken a positive pacifist line and were helping to improve work- ing-class women's lives. Some of these women were part of the Women's Co-operative Guild who had published Maternity: Letters from Working Women5 in 1915. Others were active in the Women's Labour League, which published a pamphlet in January 1918 called The Working Women's House. Their feminist ideas showed a departure from the older ideas of nineteenth-century feminism whose main objective had been pol- itical, economic and social equality with men, with very little class analysis. The 'new' feminists had a more 'woman-centred' view, campaigning around women's issues especially areas concerning the health and welfare of women and children. There were contradic- tions in this approach since it accepted a broadly patriarchal view of women as wives and mothers, but it had the support of working- class women. The women who became members of the Housing Sub-Com- mittee came from differing political positions. Gertrude Emmott, who chaired the committee, was a Liberal and president of the par- liamentary and legislation committee of the National Council of Women. The working methods of the committee however bore the stamp of women in the labour movement and there were a number of labour women on the committee, including Eleanor Barton who 27 Making Space had been president ofthe Women's Co-operative Guild and Averil D. Sanderson Furniss from the Women's Labour League. The com- mittee was made up of 11 women- including Dorothy C. Peel, who had written several books on household management, and Sybella Branford who had some architectural training. They came together as women to put women's collective view. Before the committee was set up, Christopher Addison, the Minister for Reconstruction, had received representations6 from many women's groups and political parties demanding that women be consulted about the 'new houses'. One such group was the Society of Women Property Managers which had established an area of housing management which was considered to be women's work exclusively. In their campaign the Women's Labour League argued: Women ought to be the housing experts and consider what they want, and leave compromises on one side. Do not carry your flag too low. Is there any reason why all children should not have the best houses that the nation can provide?7 Housing provision for the working class had been debated long before 1918." Should the style of the house be a tenement or a cot- tage house? How many rooms should the house contain and how big should they be? What activities - such as personal washing, cook- ing, food preparation and laundry - should happen in the same room? Should cooking be done in the main family living room? Should every house have a front parlour? Did the house need hot and cold running water? ISee chapter 5 for examples of answers to the questions. I In July 1917, another advisory committee was set up9 by the Local Government Board which controlled the design of municipal council housing prior to 1918. Known as the Tudor Waiters Com- mittee, it consisted exclusively of men who were 'experts' in the field of housing- some politicians and some technical experts. Their brief was to report on methods of building the new houses cheaply and quickly. Raymond Unwin was one of the experts on the committee. He was an influential figure in the debate of 1918. Since 1910 he had been on several committees considering the type, size and layout of municipal houses. Although removed from the day-to-day lives of working-class people, he had been a radical socialist in his youth and was sympathetic to the demands of the working class for better 28 Homes fit for heroines: housing in the twenties housing. At the time most working-class families lived, ate, cooked and spent their leisure time in one main room. Many people wanted a room where they could escape from all the hurly-burly ofdaily liv- ing- a front parlour. Unwin attacked such ideas and described them as: 'a desire to imitate the middle-class house' and saw it as imprac- tical to divide the house up into a series ofsmall rooms. By 1918, labour women had written a great deal about the con- ditions of working-class women's lives, notably Maud Pember Reeves who documented the lives of working-class women in Lam- beth in Round about a Pound a Week. She describes a typical house in Lambeth, a divided town house with two families living in it, sharing a scullery and copper on the ground floor. The house had no hot running water, and the family who lived upstairs had no cold running water. The woman had to carry water up the stairs and the slops down again. Each family had exclusive use of two rooms, one a bedroom where the whole family slept, the other a living room where the only source of heating and cooking was an open grate, kept clean and blacked with Zebra lead by the women. All personal washing was done in one or other of the two rooms; the lavatory was downstairs in the back yard. It was an awareness of these housing conditions which shaped the demands of the Women's Housing Sub-Committee. Conse- quently they demanded a separate workroom for cooking and food preparation; a separate bathroom; a front parlour; labour-saving devices (such as hot and cold running water, a kitchen range which did not involve stooping, with easy clean finishes); and play spaces for both older and younger children. The Women's Housing Sub-Committee first visited the housing estates, which had been built, using direct during the war to house munition workers: Hall Estate in London and Gretna Green. "They set out guide lines for themselves women for their opinions about their houses: In visiting houses it is important to find of the housewife as to the advantages or disadvantages of each feature in her house and also to hear the opinion ofas many dif- ferent women as possible on the same points, in order that the Committee's conclusions may not be based on isolated state- ments from one or two women, but may take into account the government subsidies, schemes such as Well about how to approach out the candid opinion 29 Making Space average and representative view held by the bulk of the tenants. 10 They also noted that in order to get women to talk freely and to give genuine views, it was best to speak to them without the presence of the manager or landlord. All these points are obvious, but are still overlooked by some people in housing management today. As well as visiting housing estates which had already been built. the Committee expanded their brief to include reporting on the plans in the Local Government Board's Design Manual for Municipal Councils which had been published in 1917. They also commented on the prize-winning cottage plans for a competition which had been organized jointly by the Local Government Board and the Royal Institute of British Architects. GROUND fLOOR. BEDROOM I :f iBEOROOM :2 ·.. .. : ••·1o'o· c~~~...._.- fiRST fLOOR. I. 1/ous•· d••si}:n.fi·'"" till' [,ond Uo<'<'/'/11111'11/s Board's [)(•sil-(n Manual. /.'J/ i'. Thl':V produn•d their findings in May 191H. Their comments on thl• cottage plans in the Design Manual received patronizing and scathing criticism from thl• Local Govemment Board: :10 Homes fit for heroines: housing in the twenties The Committee's want of experience in reading plans has no doubt been a serious disadvantage to them. The comments as to the indication of means of lighting in a ground plan or a section such as that given with plan No.7 could not have been made by anyone who realised that such drawings would not contain the information referred to ... It is intended for the assistance and guidance of practical persons such as are found on local auth- orities to whom it is addressed and not for education of novices. 11 These comments are patently unfounded, for the women showed a deep understanding of the issues involved. The interim report proved to be so potentially explosive that the male officials at the Ministry of Reconstruction decided to publish only half of it. The prospect of similar attacks in the future may have been one of the reasons that the women decided to expand and deepen the scope of their work. They decided to consult with working-class women. and to research facts and figures about technical aspects of house design, such as different methods of providing hot running water. A discussion paper set out guide line questions for meetings:12 these ranged from whether the bathroom should be upstairs or downstairs to whether it was preferred to use the living room as a kitchen or to cook and prepare food in the scullery. Women were encouraged to organize, meet and discuss the kind of houses they wanted. Replies came from many women's groups, mothers' and infants' clinics, mothers' schools (set up as result of organized cam- paigns by the women's labour movement for improved health and welfare for women and children), women's suffrage societies, women's co-operative guilds and others. Many working-class women expressed ideas that reinforced dominant patriarchal ideas about the role of women in the nuclear family, even though the war had provided an impulse towards a change in traditional gender relations. Women had taken over men's jobs; public nurseries and kitchens had been set up. In fact the replies from working-class women highlighted differences between themselves and some of the middle-class feminists on the committee about whether childcare and other facilities should be communally or individually provided. If we look at the final report of the Women's Housing Com- mittee and compare their findings to the Tudor Waiters Committee 31 Making Space Report, we can see how the women's committee's approach put over 'women's' views'. The final report of the Women's Sub-Committee was concerned to keep costs low for the housewife, whose job was to spin out the limited household budget. By choosing to prepare tasty but often scarcely nourishing food which took the least time to cook, she saved on cooking fuel. So the most economical means of heating water and cooking had been relentlessly investigated. They were also concerned to keep rents low whilst maximizing the size and number of rooms. The committee insisted that a parlour should be provided where the woman could relax and escape from work unfinished in the rest of the house. They argued that the state should bear the extra cost of providing women with 'good working conditions'. They asserted the need for cooking to be removed from the family living room to a separate workroom at the back- a kit- chen or scullery. They said: In the plans we have studied, and in the houses we have visited, we note that it is generally assumed that the living room shall be in the kitchen. We do not consider this arrangement desir- able and in this view we are supported by a large number of working women. The living room is needed for nursery, meal and sitting room- it should not be ·the workshop of the home. All hard and dirty work should be done in the scullery, both to ensure the comfort of the family and to save the housewife by grouping together all the tools of her industry in one con- veniently planned place.1:1 In the Tudor Waiters Committee's Report their view ofeconomy was to save costs through better design. They suggested that econ- omies could be made on floorboards by having a long, narrow, living room plan, since the boards would not have to span so far. They sug- gested that by reducing the depth of the house, shorter rafters could be used, since the rafters ran from front to back. Also, by building a compact floor plan, they argued, the area that the outside walls would wrap round the building would be smaller, and would need fewer bricks. The women were also concerned about limiting the amount of women's energy expended in housework, which was a source of much ill-health for women. They urged that it was important to find 32 --T'!- FRONT ELEVATION FJQST FLOOR. PLAN GR.OUND fLOOR. ~LAN 2. Urban house design, proposed by the Local Government Board's Design Manual, 1919. 33 MakinR Space a suitable method of heating water: The extra time, trouble and expense involved when water must be heated in kettles and carried to the bath. wash top or sink, is a serious addition to the housewife's burden. A great part of the everyday work of the house. as well as the laundry work, is dou- bled by the lack ofa proper supply ofhot water. The extra strain on the woman's strength. coupled with the waste of time, leaves her without either the opportunity or energy to attend to other household tasks or to secure any form of recreation for herself. We can see from their final report published in February 1919 that although some of the feminists on the committee were interested in communal housekeeping arrangements they stated unequivocally what working-class women wanted. In this they were bringing their particular early-twentieth-century feminism to bear on the infor- mation they received, perceiving women's struggle and the class struggle as one which took account of women in the weakest pos- ition. At the same time, the Women's Housing Sub-Committee did not limit their investigations to the design and planning of nuclear family houses, they also looked at co-operative housekeeping arrangements. There had been several interesting pilot schemes for co-operative arrangements, in particular Homesgarth and Mea- doway Green in Letchworth Garden City, built in 1909-13 and 1915-24 respectively. Both these schemes challenged traditional ideas ofdomestic work. Homesgarth, for middle-class, childless couples, was laid out around a quadrangle with individual flats designed without kit- chens. It had a communal dining room and laundry, all domestic work was done by servants. Meadoway Green was different; it was for working-class tenants and, since they had no servants, each flat had a small kitchen. The tenants ate in a communal dining room and employed one full-time cook and a part-time charwoman. The kitchen was run by the women residents themselves on a rota. Com- mittee members who visited Homesgarth and Meadoway Green were enthusiastic about the schemes. The women were interested in communal housekeeping arrangements, but they said. 'Successful experiments can only be made after consultation with working women and full co-operation with them.' The sceptical replies they had received to the discussion 34 ~ ~ l._._..______J ... .. I DINING HALl STORE CLOAKS 4 ENTRANCE OFFICE SERVICE ROOM a SITTING ROOM BEDROOM PANTRY d BATH e we 105010 feet SCALE 3. Plan of'HomesRarth'. a co-operative housinR scheme pioneered by Ebenezer Howard and designed by A. Clapham Landes.J909- 13. 35 Making Space paper had told them of working-class women's feelings. 14 Their com- ments were based on their own experiences ofcommunal living, per- haps sharing a scullery like Maud Pember Reeve's working-class tenants, or memories of queueing for soup from a charity kitchen. The Women's Housing Sub-Committee showed a sympathetic understanding ofthe remarks ofworking-class women, whilst at the same time as feminists they could see the longer term benefits to be gained from pushing for housing layouts which would reflect some changes in traditional gender relations in the home. In their Final Report the Committee concluded: English women do not under present conditions regard commu- nal arrangements with favour. It is not, however, a reason for neglecting to consider schemes by which unnecessary drudgery would be saved, and there can be little doubt that the solution of many of the difficult domestic problems will eventually be found along the lines of co-operation rather than in isolated effort. Their feminism came from the developed ideas of women in the labour movement. They saw the double bind that if women stated their views as ~ust housewives', then they were reinforcing tra- ditional gender roles of women as housekeepers and mothers and this excluded them from an equal role inthe labour force outside the home. Indeed, the Pre-War Practices Act subsequently gave men returning from the first world war the right to reclaim their former jobs from women. Feminists in 1918 were faced with the likelihood that gains they had made during the war would be gradually eroded. Through the work of the Women's Housing Sub-Committee, working-class women had stated their needs and made many vital criticisms about a traditional woman's role in working-class hous- ing conditions. Their requirements for change, however, showed a desire to fit the house better to the traditional roles of housewife and mother rather than in questioning the potentially oppressive nature of this role. A similar dilemma remains today. Feminists need to find new ways of organizing and designing houses to meet women's needs without reinforcing oppressive roles for us within the home and family. 36 4. Women and public space Linda MacDowell has described how British towns and cities in the twentieth century locate women's and men's work in different places: Production based on waged labour in the marketplace is under- taken collectively in specialised locations, predominantly by men but also by women, whereas the household reproduction of this labour power, based on the unpaid labour of individual women, is undertaken in isolation in countless decentralised locations. 1 In this chapter I want to show how this idealized pattern of women in the suburbs and men in the city has affected the actual locations and 'appropriate' environments of homes, workplaces and other facilities. And I want to show some of the ways in which the makers of the twentieth-century city have served only to highlight the con- tradictions in the inequalities between women and men and between classes, in their attempts to adapt the physical environ- ment to 'match' changing social patterns. There are several strands to be unravelled, many contradictory influences to be considered. It is possible, for instance, to look at house designs of the late nineteenth century and show a direct par- allel in their social and spatial standards ofprivacy and segregation within the home with political and social change in society at large.2 The combination of a growing middle class and new bourgeois attitudes of social behaviour, together with trade union campaigns for a 'family wage' that enabled a man to earn enough to support a: wife and children, conspired to keep the new 'model' woman firmly within the home. Architect-authors like Robert Kerr (see pages 64-7) offered house plans, house styles and appropriate environ- 37 Making Space ments that were both a description of what these developing middle- class patterns were and what they should be. On the other hand, the twentieth century, particularly since the second world war, has left us with a legacy of buildings and towns that emphasize the tremendous gap between architectural and plan- ning intentions and social and political realities. We often feel a real disjunction between physical form and social reality (or at least what social reality might bel. It is much less easy to 'read ofl' women's position in society from the built form oftowns today than, say, to interpret a Victorian house plan. This is not, however, because the makers of the built environment have stopped building their stereotypical ideas about the 'proper' place of women into the physical fabric. It is because, in many cases, these stereotypical ideas have come into conflict with, or sit uneasily against, shifts in the social position of women and the changing ways in which women see themselves. For instance, the stereotyped image of women as home- makers and mothers which was so strong in the 1950s has to be jux- taposed with the tremendous shift of married women into paid employment during this period. As Friend and Metcalf point out, it was the 2.2 million rise in the number of working women that was almost entirely responsible for the 2.4 million rise in the working population between 1951 and 1971.:1 In house planning this problem was 'coped with' and obscured by an emphasis on 'labour-saving' machinery and layouts, an ideol- ogy of house design which had satisfactorily blurred the massive shift onto middle-class women of household tasks formerly under- taken by servants. !See chapter 6. l The housewives' role could there- fore be maintained in all its shining splendour against the pressure of paid employment by the myth that it was being squeezed into less time and was easier to 'manage'. To some extent this myth was maintained until the early sixties when Betty Friedan published a book calling the isolation of the housewife and the constraining quality of housework 'the problem with no name'.·' Acknowledgement of women's unequal position at home and in paid work was notable only by its absence in post-1945 town plan- ning. Towns were to be separated into their various activities, each with its appropriate location and setting. This was called zoning, which closely approximated stereotypical ideas about man's use of the environment: The wage worker sells his labour power as a commodity for a definite period of time, in exchange for a money wage. The rest of his time is his own and there is a rigid separation of his life into work and leisure. His wages are spent on commodities con- sumed away from the workplace. Thus production and con- sumption are two separate activities, emotionally and physically." The 'ideal', then, was a leisured setting that contained the home, and a work environment that was physically elsewhere. This split was to be made possible by 100 per cent ownership of cars. Into this pattern the very different use of space by women, who also under- take household labour and often childcare, had to fit as best it could. And the difference in women's access to cars was ignored (as, for that matter, were class inequalities that have prevented 100 per cent car ownership becoming a reality). In the rest of this chapter I will look at two aspects of the physi- cal form of towns, together with some of the social changes for women since 1945 and show the interrelationships, which add up to the 'place' of women in society today. I will consider zoning and its effects on women's mobility and I will look at stereotypical ideas about 'proper' home environments and their failings. Many of the issues here could be applied to some working-class men, particularly to immigrants and migrants who perform a simi- lar economic role to working-class women. They too are restricted in their use ofthe built environment- by low incomes and by what are considered 'proper' places for them to be. This chapter focuses on women to highlight the differences between the ways women exper- ience our physical surroundings from men - and how this difference is ultimately reinforced by all men attempting to maintain their position in society. Women and mobility Milton Keynes is a new town in Buckinghamshire, based on plan- ners' predictions of 100 per cent car ownership. It has a convenient. fast-flowing grid network of roads leading to social and commercial facilities that are both placed centrally and spread evenly through- out the town. Housing estates with (mostly) village-like environ- ments sit between these grid roads and are connected to each other Women and public space 39 Making Space by a system of winding, wide footpaths for pedestrians and cyclists. What Milton Keynes offers is an 'ideal' planned town, based on the home-work-leisure split - and thus, like many new towns, it exag- gerates difficulties of access for the less mobile both by the separ- ation of activities and by the sheer physical distance made between them. As in other parts of the country, women are disproportion- ately less mobile then men. Although 60 per cent of households in Milton Keynes possess one or more cars, about three-quarters of housewives do not have access to a car during weekdays, for two reasons. Most people travel to their place of paid employment by motor car- partly because the public transport system is quite inef- ficient. So, in car-owning households, the family car(s) will usually be used by the husband and/or teenage children. What is more, only 29 per cent of housewives in households owning one car, and 69 per cent in households currently owning two or more cars, know how to drive.6 Plainly, the mobility of women is restricted unless they live in an area with a very good public transport network, or have equal use of a private car. So women tend to lead a more 'local' existence, not just because of domestic roles and responsibilities but also because of an inequality between the genders in access to resources. Much planning takes this inequality for granted. The 'neighbour- hood' unit. on which towns like Milton Keynes are based, offers par- ticular facilities locally - a few shops, parks, primary school and health care facilities which, as McDowell says, could be 'benevo- lently interpreted as reducing travel times and costs for women and children. less benevolently as minimizing choice'.7 Such planning policies produce a self-fulfilling prophecy: women are locally based not only through their allotted role but also because the arrange- ment of space precludes alternatives: the physical patterning of space and activities supports. perpetuates and 'naturalizes' the diffi- culty of getting beyond the local neighbourhood. The emphasis on individual mobility through private car ownership since the second world war is reflected in the way our man-made surroundings lack consideration for the less mobile - people in wheelchairs or using sticks. women carrying heavy loads of shopping ot· pushing prams or pushchairs over kerbs, old people negotiating a high step onto a bus - and for small children. This works disproportionately against women. We are actually less mobile because of less access to transport and resources. We are also 40 less mobile than men because we take the major role in caring for young children and old people who cannot go so fast or so far. Women are also often made to appear less mobile- or less than women if they are mobile. Thus free-moving girls are designated surrogate boys (tomboys) and older girls find themselves asexual in their peer group unless they dress themselves as static and, prefera- bly, fragile objects in clothes that inhabit free movement, focusing on characteristics ofthe female body <high heels that make legs look longer and hips swing, for instance) to the benefit of the onlooker rather than the mobility of the wearer. Women live in an environment designed to enhance (and there- fore reinforce) the 'norm' of individual mobility- from plans for new road networks to move cars further faster and more efficiently, to housing estates located in suburban areas distanced from places of paid employment. That this is a male, white, middle-class 'norm' Oook at almost any cross-section of car drivers during rush hourJ is ignored by the makers of our physical surroundings. At the same time, this 'norm' of mobility is perceived by men as a male preroga- tive. Many stereotypical ideas contain penalties for women who are mobile. This works in trivial ways, like jokes about female car- drivers, to more intimidating male responses to women who do not appear static or localized: women hitchhiking, or out by themselves somehow deserve to be attacked and raped. This restriction on mobility has to be taught to girls- it is not a natural biological fact. Girl children are socialized off the street through an implanted fear of men, by restrictions on street games and activities and by an emphasis on activities that concern grace rather than speed. Girls soon learn to take up as little space as poss- ible to be allowed within the category 'female'. Boys soon learn that they can prove their 'boyness' by taking up lots of room, particularly outside on the street. These stereotypical ideas about the appropriate 'mobility' of girls and women are not unchanging. The Victorian middle classes made a clear mental and physical division between women/private and men/public which almost went so far as to define women's sex- uality by their location in physical space. As all women (and not just working-class or immigrant women) have become more visible in the public sphere with the expansion of educational opportunities and forms of paid employment, so these ideas have had to shift and adapt. But just as women are still much more restricted than men in Women and public space 41 4. Our city and town planners lack consideration for the least mobile. 43 Making Space the places they can go alone or with children and to 'appropriate' areas of work, so the making of the physical environment is still being affected by notions about 'proper' settings for women which come directly from the nineteenth century. An ideal home environment? Since the early nineteenth century, social reformers, planners and architects have emphasized the importance of the home environ- ment and home life as an antidote - almost an exchange for - the ugly excesses of capitalist development. Early town planning, for instance, concentrated on removing housing from the pollution and noise generated by work environments rather than on improving the latter. Whilst this emphasis on a particular type of home environment offers many material gains over nineteenth-century housing conditions, it nonetheless makes assumptions about the role of women which have not been entirely beneficial. Most contemporary housing layouts are built on a set of assumptions about appropriate imagery and the physical arrange- ment of space. Currently these are that houses should be grouped around a series of protected outside sp!lces enclosing 'nature' which are linked informally and which together make a separate territory visually divided from the surrounding environment. Several hous- ing manuals have been produced in recent years which codify these ideas into physical patterns and imagery. The four illustrations that follow come from one such guide for architects, An Introduction to Housing Layout, produced by the Greater London Council Depart- ment of Architecture and Civic Design in 1978.8 These layouts seem 'appropriate' to the makers of the built environment because they are based on overlapping ideas that rein- force and justify each other. Such layouts offer the appearance of a protected home environment, suggest a leisured home life based on village-like rural settings, and are a real attempt to respond to the visual monotony and coldness of much housing built in earlier periods. What results have these notions had on the actual design of contemporary public housing schemes and how, in turn, has the 'place' of women been affected? These housing estates are an extension of nineteenth-century ideas about the proper segregation of home and work and of women and men - but combined with a developing awareness by social 44 reformers through the twentieth century of women's isolation within individual homes (described, for example, in Spring Rice's survey of the 1930s.9 The answer was a simple spatial metaphor. A community of women was formed merely by extending the home environment out to encompass a number of homes together. This intermediate space between the house interior and the outside world has, theorically at least, a double function. It is the space that brings women and families 'together' to make friends, share tasks, and so on; it is also a protected outside space for women and children to enjoy at leisure away from the dangers and difficulties of the out- side world beyond. Unfortunately, the isolation many women suffer, from taking sole charge for domestic labour and childcare, is not The design of sitting areas and the positioning of benches can encourage or inhibit conversation. The designer should be aware of these possibilities. 5. A design guide's mechanistic view ofopen space and social interaction. from An Introduction to Housing Layout,J978. Women and public space 45 Making Space necessarily relieved by the mere proximity of other women in the same position- and is anyway inadequate compensation for the lack ofalternatives to solitary work. Similarly, the mechanistic arrange- ment of the physical space, with for instance a bulge made in the pavement for two mothers with prams to stop and talk (see Illus- tration 6, page 48), or the seating arrangement proposed in illus- tration 5 to 'encourage or inhibit conversation' make spatial and architectural metaphors of social interaction which ignore the actual realities for women. No woman engages unthinkingly in idle conversation with an unknown man just because he sits on a facing bench rather than alongside. Whilst these housing layouts do offer some benefits by being separated from the outside world (a pleasant landscape and no traffic, for instance) they do not protect women from male behaviour outside the home- a point I will come back to. Outside spaces on housing estates are designed around ideas of a rural. village-like setting. This again is a nineteenth-century notion, criticized by Davidoff, L'Esperance and Newby: What has occurred has been the blurring of the aesthetic, par- ticularly the physical environment, and the social, because it was assumed that the village or home could be aesthetically pleasing, it was assumed that they contained an equally valued social existence. Consequently the model stimulated a particu- lar perspective on the problems of poverty and exploitation. Where the poverty of the farm labourer (or servant) was ack- nowledged - and it occasionally was- its importance was over- ruled by the alleged metaphysical delights of working within such a culturally approved environment. The farm labourer, or servant, or the wife or child, was therefore not regarded as being exploited, not because their subordination was not at least sometimes acknowledged but that this subordination did not matter when set beside the domestic and rural idyll. w Some housing estates seem also to use nature to enhance the 'picture' of domestic and village bliss, sometimes, for instance, expending much energy on the external village-like setting at the expense of space standards within the houses and flats themselves. But the partial truth that a 'natural' setting is a better environment than other parts of our urban surroundings has obscured the very real differences in the use and usability of this 'estate' space for working-class women and men. 46 Space works differently here from the way it does in the owner- occupied rural idylls ofsuburb and village. Tenants do not have the resources to maintain this intermediate space, which neither belongs to them nor is properly 'public' property. Many estates have deteriorated, partly because the population densities involved mean they suffer much more intense use than any suburb or village and partly because working-class people have often been expected to somehow generate resources spontaneously and collectively to maintain their 'natural' setting when they can neither afford time nor money or see a tangible gain from their efforts. Alison Ravetz in her book about Quarry Hill estate in Leeds shows the extent to which the local authority expected the local community to 'manage' their estate whilst giving them no real control in decision-making or resources to maintain open spaces. Tenants not only had to suffer the resulting deterioration in their environment but were blamed for it as well.u Because of its appalling condition, Quarry Hill was recently demolished. In its reduced form the 'rural' environment can become just a shorthand label for 'ideal home environment' rather than providing actual usable space for children's play or relaxation. The physical patterning of this 'natural' setting contains many assumptions about women's role outside the home. It leads, for instance, to housing layouts based on 'rural' meandering paths which imply that the journeys of women, children and old people are without purpose. (See Illustration 6). These paths are meant liter- ally to map the ways women with children and old people move. At the same time there is a confusion between slowness ofjourney and its purposefulness. The implication is that journeys that are not fast or in straight lines are not really going anywhere. The resulting lay- outs only serve to underline the physical distance between homes and shops or workplaces, in turn making journeys for women with children or old people even longer. Many different housing forms seem to work in a similar way to exaggerate the distances of facili- ties from women at home, whether in the lifts, stairs and lobbies of high-rise flats or the cui-de-sacs and winding roads ofsuburban lay- outs. Physical space can add to the isolation of childcare and dom- estic labour. The spatial arrangement ofhigh-rise flats or new towns did not create the condition we now call high-rise or new-town blues. By worsening the difficulties in getting out with small children or transporting heavy shopping up steps around endless corners and Women and public space 47 Hurrying Meandering Reshng Play.ng The purpoae - · :!_] ,--------~- [-~ 48 L-~ - - --- Bnsk walk from A to B Out for a stroll The shopper, old people I ( hddren runn1ng, sk1pp.ng, Jumpmg, ,.,,,;,n ~;)l l_____ _~ r~ -tt~l I_u - • - ~-_0--~~ ~ I.- ! I I LL_ --- ------ Foolp3lh ,1d1acent to front doors - s ! o p p 1n g t o r a c h a t W1den1ng 1n path for two mothers w1lh prams to stop and talk 6. Meandering path patterns for women and children imply lack ofpurpose: from An Introduction to Housing Layout 1978. ramps, these estates must sometimes seem the last straw - making childcare a pressure instead of a pleasure. These ideas which see the occupants of the protected home environment as leisured - or at least without any sense of purpose or urgency- are also contained in another aspect of the preferred physical setting: stringing out an informally connected set of spaces with vistas blocked and then re- opened. The occupants are perceived almost as tourists (or children) who meander from space to space because objects and architectural elements en route catch their interest. Although this informal patterning is partly a response to the monotonyofmanyhousingschemesinearlierperiods12 itfocuseson a particular response - 'visual amenity' which in its preferred organization of space ignores women's experience of space outside the home - and contains some ambiguities for the designers them- selves. On one hand, visual interest is seen to 'lead' people on from place to place as if they might be sightseeing. These blocked views make people curious about what lies beyond. On the other, such restricted views somehow simultaneously define areas of private territory from which people should keep out. For women it tends to be much more simple. Spaces where mystery figures lurk, or could easily hide, feel dangerous. 13 This ambiguity around who has access to the public/private space on public sector housing estates has dogged designers since the early days of council house building, especially since they tend to ignore its gender basis; it has resulted in many estates that are no-man's, or rather no-woman's lands. The contemporary housing layouts I have been describing build the theoretically opposed and separate 'woman's place' and 'man's world' into one overlapping area. And it is the women who suffer - and the working classes generally for whom this environment has been made and re-made through history. This so-called protected environment, which is meant to be an extension out from the home, is in too many cases an extension into the estate of the 'ownership' of public space by men and boys. No amount of mechanistic plans for communities or villages or social interaction can prevent men from dominating the space outside the home- and keeping women in from fear. This is so for two reasons. Many men still perceive women's sex- uality as partially defined by their location, and therefore attempt to enforce and perpetuate those definitions. Whilst male violence Women and public space 49 7. No woman is invited by a blind alley; from An Introduction to Housing Layout. 8. Inviting corners simultaneously mark territory symbolically to keep people out; from An Introduction to Housing Layout. 50 lt says to us "come in, this might lead somewhere, there may be an exit". slight angle Upon entenng the mews proper there is still a change in direct•on lead•nQ ...? 11 •s the sense of mystery about what hes eround the corner which causes a v•s•tor to quest•on h•s nght to be there- symbolic terntory. and behaviour 'on the street' is not condoned, it is often seen simul- t'lneously as extreme or delinquent behaviour in individual boys and men, and as essentially continuous and therefore natural and allowable with normal male 'growing up'. These attempts to describe female sexuality spatially do not stop at public space but extend right into the workplace. Cynthia Cockburn, in her book on the newspaper printing industry, showed how the men she talked to thought of women as 'pure' or 'sullied' depending on their location. The women who were mentally con- tained within the home environment, the man's wife and daughters, were to be kept in the first category. But the women at the work- place and outside the home were described in the second, their per- ceived sexuality constantly discussed and routinely joked about among the men. As Cockburn says: The pleasure of this [latter] process, though, !and it is of course only partly pleasurable, being partly also a fear of women) comes precisely from the contrast between the pure and the sul- lied. This becomes an unresolvable contradiction for men if women share the same workplace in unsegregated occupations, on equal terms, in the same room. To hold in tension both of the two meanings ascribed to women depends on the separation of the spheres of home and work. 14 In the space beyond the home, attempts to maintain these two incompatible meanings cause considerable ambivalence among men towards women, often with potentially contradictory meanings being held simultaneously. Thus women learn from an early age that men, in seeing them as 'other' define women as frightening/ unknown and mysterious/attractive at one and the same time. Casual comments often made at women alone in the street under- line this ambiguity. These are, so men say, both complimentary and trivial. Y et the remarks are an everyday reminder of the bounds of appropriate behaviour - at the same time making them impossible to achieve, being a combination at one and the same time of the pure and the sullied. Thus women must appear sexually attractive to the gaze of men outside the home without attracting men sexually and therefore taking the blame for the ultimate enforcing mechanism by which women are still kept in the home- sexual attack by force. The implicit threat of rape is conveyed in terms of certain pre- scriptions which are placed on the behaviour ofgirls and women Women and public space 51 Making Space and through 'commonsense' understandings which naturalise gender-appropriate forms ofbehaviour. Both the implicit threat of rape, couched in terms of prevalent social stereotypes, and the conventionally accepted ways to avoid such an experience, being in some places rather than others, doing some things and not others are conveyed, are continually reinforced along with a whole range of values concerning female (and malel sexua- lity.15 Women know that at base these prevalent ideas about appropri- ate behaviour and locations are not adequate protection against attack. Despite media and male 'surprise' when 'inappropriate' women in 'inappropriate' places are raped and assaulted, most women feel that they are not safe anywhere. Women must therefore resort to remedial devices, either by not going out, or by going out only with men or by staying in and around places that feel safe. We need to know much more about how the design of space makes some places feel safer than others, and/or actually be safer, and the extent to which our man-made surroundings might ameliorate the lack of safety outside the home for women, just as, currently, they exagger- ate it. Contemporary housing layouts are a response to many prob- lems - to the unsuccessful forms and styles of previous housing schemes, to the inadequacy of financing and to changing social con- ditions and aspirations. But whilst the benefits and truths contained in stereotypical ideas about 'proper' home environments should not be ignored or forgotten, much of the imagery of new housing estates merely attempts to paper over the cracks caused by the differences in use ofoutside space by women and men (and inequalities between classes). The results, I suggest, of the actual chosen pattern- con- tinued separation, meandering paths and blocked views- have been in many ways unsatisfactory for women. Thus these estates serve to highlight in physical space the contradiction between woman's place and 'man's world'. Making out It is true that women are not so restricted to the home nowadays as they were in Victorian Britain, at least not by explicit social rules preventing women from leaving the house or gaining access to pub- lic places, work places and social facilities. In a society that values 52 'freedom' of mobility, women are still much more localized than men who continue, to some extent, to maintain women's 'out-of-place- ness' outside the home. To sum up: what are the mechanisms by which towns and cities reinforce a gender division of labour and a gender division of experi- ence in the use of space outside the home? Firstly, the physical arrangements of activities and space (which categories of activity go together, which are kept apart, the patterns by which they are con- nected) combine with individual freedom of movement, allotted roles and tasks, and access to resources, to either limit or expand the usability of the built environment to women and to men. Many town planning policies expand the usability of our surroundings for the white, middle-class male at the expense of others, particularly women. Secondly, the built environment makes 'appropriate' set- tings for different activities which contain 'messages' about 'proper' gender roles in those places. Finally, there is the way in which ster- eotypical ideas about female and male behaviour are connected to particular locations which can proscribe women's movement outside the home and their 'appropriate' behaviour from street to work- place. These three mechanisms are not all-encompassing or totally effective in maintaining women's 'place' outside the home. They, and the ideas behind them, are always being challenged and the contradictions coped with or reassessed. Similarly, in criticizing 'appropriate' ideas about the home environment, I am not suggest- ing for instance that homes are 'oppressive' to women because they are surrounded with trees. However, our homes and our lives could be arranged in many forms different to the way they are now. What many people consider 'appropriate' environments and relationships between activities are based on priorities overwhelmingly deter- mined by men, which often ignore the different experiences of many women, or place them in a 'picture' that is more romantic than actual. Feminists are now looking both to ways of making the existing environment better (more safe, less difficult to get about) and at new ways of defining categories of home and work, caring and paid employment which will have long-term effects on the physical arrangement of facilities and the spaces in between. For instance, the Greater London Council's Women's Com- mittee, Woman and Planning Working Group, have made recom- Women and public space 53 Making Space mendations for planning policies that discriminate in favour of women and for more involvement of women in the planning process. They suggest that women's groups monitor the effectiveness ofpoli- cies for women. They have recommended policies giving priorities to safe, convenient and cheap public transport, to safe streets and the design of public space accessible to all, including the disabled, older people and parents with children. They want improved accessibility for women to non-traditional jobs and forms of employment oppor- tunities that take into account people's roles outside of work Finally, they have suggested planning policies that acknowledge the importance of caring employment by creating paid work in this area, by providing financial support for it, by ensuring that public facilities provide childcare, and by the provision of local centres which meet the needs of women. The more we can understand about how stereotypical ideas are made solid in the built environment, the more we can criticize them by showing up the ambiguities and difficulties for women living in these man-made surroundings, and begin to suggest alternatives. 54 5. House design and women's roles The plan of a house tells us lots of things about how women are expected to organize their lives. For instance: How big is the kit- chen? Is there room for more than one person to work in it? How many living spaces are there? What activities are catered for in each? In fact the design of houses in Britain reflects the oppression of women in society; by using plans we can graphically illustrate this, showing the relative size and position of rooms. We have limited this selection to urban houses in Britain in order to make some simple comparisons. (Despite the chronological order these house plans are not presented as a comprehensive historical sur- vey.) The houses were designed and built between the early nine- teenth and mid-twentieth centuries. The plans are chosen from these periods because they are still common today. Enough is known about contemporary social conditions to show the way plans reinforced ideas about women's place within the house. The most striking theme of the plans is the privatization of family life. Accommodation for each household became self-con- tained as a family unit. While very little privacy is provided for indi- viduals within the family, families as a whole were increasingly expected to be private from each other. The dominant household form- almost the only one that has been designed for- is that ofthe nuclear family. Yet there are subtle shifts in relationships within households which vary from decade to decade and from class to class. The status and visibility of domestic work changed during the twentieth century. The mechanization ofdomestic tasks, whereby the middle classes replaced servants and the working classes con- siderably reduced heavy labour, made domestic work more respect- 55 Making Space able. The kitchen is compared to a science laboratory and kitchen equipment has become something to show off. The homogeneity of family life also alters so that at some periods families are expected to live in one space, and at other times more differentiated spaces are provided. In working-class house- holds the living room becomes separated from the kitchen whilst in middle-class households in the nineteenth century there is a separ- ation not only of functions but also of classes. The servants' rooms are separated from those of their employers. The status of different activities such as sleeping and eating is clearly shown in the plans by the size of the space allocated to these activities, their relation- ship to each other, and their relationship to the world outside. Finally. there are notable omissions from the plans, for instance the lack of separate play areas for children. How to read plans Plans are necessary tools for understanding and talking about buildings. People whose work involves building have been taught how to read drawings. Others are often presented with drawings and made to feel incompetent if they cannot understand them. The following is a briefexplanation ofwhat plans describe. Plans are like maps; they are a bird's-eye view of a building. They do not show what a building or a town looks like in real life. Their purpose is to describe the relationship between buildings, or parts of a building. in the same way as a map shows the relationship between places. Plans show a building at a particular plane. They show a slice through the building, usually about waist height above floor level. For instance. the plan of a room in a typical nineteenth-century ter- race house will look like Illustration 9 lpage 57l. Each element - door, window, staircase, wall etc. - is drawn in a particular way. Each line represents the edge of something. For example, a wall is drawn with two strong parallel lines; ifthere is a window in the wall there will be faint lines for the wall below the window and possibly the window sill. strong lines for the frame ofthe window at the sides and strong lines for the glass which the slice cuts through. All the strong lines represent elements the cut passes through; the faint lines represent the planes below it (see Illustration 10, page 57l. Where the cut goes through a door, the wall and door frame will 56 cloor 10. Plan and sketch ofa window. be in strong lines, one or two lines show the door open, and a faint curved line shows the line of the door swing. This shows which way the door opens and that it does not hit anything when it closes or opens (see Illustration 11, page 581. Stairs are shown like Illus- tration 12 (page 58) on plans. Each line represents the end of each tread (or stepl of the stair- case. Beside the stairs is probably a handrail which runs from newel post to newel post. These are usually shown too. They are important because they support the staircase. An arrow shows which way the stairs are going. Usually the arrow points upwards, and often it will have 'up' written beside it to make sure. One problem with stairs is that, sooner or later, because they are going up they will meet the Jollndow 9. Typical plan ofa room. 57 ::IT:1 0 DC DD I -'- 11. Plan and ketch ofa door. :-::-= 12. Plan ofstairs. ...____ line of the cut of the plan. When this happens a diagonal line is drawn across the stairs, and from that point on what you see on the plan is what is below the stairs - a cupboard, or the flight of stairs below . You can also show a vertical slice through a building. This is called a section, and it tells us how high the ceilings are, the shape and construction of the roof, and foundations. As with a plan, the 58 DooR CL05ED parts of a building you are looking onto (for example), a staircase or a door on the wall opposite) are shown by faint lines, and the parts that are cut through are shown by strong lines. 13. Vertical slice through a house- called a section. Weavers• cottages Modern houses are divided into rooms with specific functions and are ge-nerally intended to accommodate only one family; these are both fairly recent innovations. Houses built for working people in the era prior to industrial capitalism were simple structures, which accommodated both activities relating to survival such as eating, sleeping, cooking and so on, as well as tasks associated with family and trading. People who were not related to onE: another lived together as one household. As industry developed in the eighteenth century, a special part of the house became a workshop. The average household included not only the mother, father, children and other relatives but also House design and women's roles stctio~ c.wt~ ihroc.~~ll WAIL 59 Making Space household servants and apprentices. In weavers' cottages the weav- ing was done on the top floor and the household lived below. Some- times the loft was also lived in as the looms could only be worked during daylight. The plans shown in Illustration 14 below are typical of weavers' cottages built in Nottingham between 1784 and 1830. Each house has a workshop and living spaces consisting of a bedroom, 'house- 60 • LOFT " FIR'>T FLOOR.. ~ Mrrow win<Ainq StQIY"c;<l~e Connc,c:.(~ eQch floor. the, 1-lo~A~e.~ were ~vllt"'ilcacK ill ;~k:' ~ well AS in te.t"r"Qc:e.s, so Clloon t.lll'ld windo~ Art l"f'tricted -fo -th~ fro11t worl<~hop friiA'/ MQve.~out>lea ~A~ livin~jsleep1i1~ ~IAc.e- CtROVND fl..OOR. 14. A lypicalweat•er"s house. built in Nollingham at/he beginning ofthe industrial ret•olution. 1784-1830. place' and pantry. Anyone moving up through the house would pass through each room in turn - an arrangement hardly ever made today. Nineteenth- and twentieth-century ideas about privacy have led to houses with a central 'circulation system' off which most, if not all, rooms can be reached separately. Model Dwellings Model dwellings were built by philanthropic housing societies throughout the nineteenth century. They were intended as housing for the urban working class. Many nineteenth-century social reformers, such as Lord Shaftesbury, believed that better housing would improve the morals and character of the working classes: The people who were formerly savage and ferocious, because they supposed themselves despised and abandoned, are now perfectly quiet and docile . . . Lady Shaftesbury has walked alone, with no attendant but a little child, through streets in London where, years ago, a well-dressed m~n could not have passed safely without an escort of the police. Lord Shaftesbury, who was also a campaigner agamst child labour, voiced an almost religious view of women's 'place' in the home. He said at the end of a debate on protective legislation for women: The moral effects of the ... system are very bad, but in the female they are infinitely worse not alone upon themselves but upon their families, upon society and I may add upon the country itself. It is bad enough that you corrupt the man, but if you corrupt the woman you poison the waters of life at the very fountain. Model dwellings were built mainly in city centres and particu- larly in inner London, by, for instance, the Peabody Trust and the East End Dwelling Company. There was a debate within the phi- lanthropic housing movement about which form of housing was best: whether minimal shelter should be provided at a low rent or better accommodation at a high rent. The plan in Illustration 15 (page 62) was a design prepared for the 1851 Exhibition. It was intended to set a good example, which other reformers were expected to follow. House design and women's roles 61 62 Separate ~edroo,.,s for- chiidrer~ of oppos·,~e ~elCes ihe anl!i~ec.t ~aic:l !tf thtSe flqts :- 11 ~e~lcot~i~ ' ! r e f o r the pre~ervatlon of eacl'l disti~tc-t "(Qrnily Qhol diSColli'\eCtlOt) of t~ei..-"Ptar~t~~er~~~ to effecti~el)' prever~t"tne Colhmvnicatio" ot co11ta9io1.1~ dise.~ses" FU.T TWO 15. 'Model Dwellinfi!s'. desifi!ned by Henry Roberts. These flats were built for the 1851 Great Exhibition as examples offi!ood housinf'! for the workin!! class. Robert Kerr, who also designed model dwellings, said, of build- ings for the 'labouring classes': The most rigid economy of arrangement, consistent with accom- modation sufficiently spacious to be convenient and healthy, and the utmost attention to cheapness of construction, consist- ent with durability and comfort, are essential elements of a really good and suitable plan. The improvement to the morals and characters of the inhabi- tants would take place through a particular sort of planning based on segregation and privacy. The working classes were to be organ- ized into 'proper' family units: Balconies were for the preservation of domestic privacy and independence of each distinct family and the disconnection of their apartments so as to effectively prevent the communication of contagious diseases. The reformers were especially worried by what they saw as the sexual morality or depravity of working-class people living in over- crowded slum conditions. In this plan three bedrooms were provided to prevent different sexes and ages from sleeping together in the same room. The boys' and girls' rooms are 'controlled' from the liv- ing room, whilst the parents' room is given privacy by being located offthe scullery. Conveniences such as the scullery and toilet in each dwelling were a definite material improvement for many working-class people. At the same time these were intended to prevent the spread of contagious diseases through communal facilities and to stress family privacy by keeping households separate from each other in their day-to-day activities. However this proved to be expensive, so that some model dwellings had shared washing and laundry facili- ties. Most model dwellings also had a set of rules and regulations to govern 'respectable' behaviour, and attempted to prevent both non- family lodgers, and paid work such as laundering being done in the home. This last rule prevented women from pursuing what had been among their traditional occupations. In their design and manage- ment, model dwellings proved to be the forerunners of modern coun- cil housing. For example it is only since 1980 that council tenants have been allowed, as a right, to have lodgers in their own homes. House design and women's roles 63 Making Space Victorian gentleman's urban house. c. 1864 The plan on page 65, Illustration 16, is for one of a row of London town houses built for the Marquis of Westminster. It is taken from The Gentleman's House by Robert Kerr published in 1864, an influential work in its time. In this plan Kerr tried to translate the principles of order and status set out in his book: modest elegance, extreme propriety in personal behaviour, a sharp division between master and servant and between women and men. Kerr probably derived these ideals from an ancient Greek manual on household management for gentlemen, Xenophon's Oeconomicus. Xenophon was primarily a military historian. A ruthless concern for efficiency, more suited to the management of an army than a household, per- vades both works. In classical Greece, households were part of the economy, mak- ing cloth and food from wool and crops. Xenophon advised rich women to be active managers. leading the servants by example. But the Victorian house was a retreat from the workplace, and upper- class women were encouraged to be indolent, thereby falling prey to the fears and diseases condemned by Xenophon more than 2,000 years before. In his book Kerr attempts to set up a complicated hierarchy of age, sex. class and household activities by their placing within the plan. As a rule of thumb status decreases from front to back and by increasing distances away from the two main floors <ground and firstl. Segregation is maintained between servants and family by separate staircases. Kerr was very concerned with privacy, which he considered the primary concern of the house: It is a first principle with the better classes of English people that the Family Rooms should be essentially private, and as much as possible the Family Thoroughfares. It becomes the foremost ofall maxims. therefore. that however small the estab- lishment. that the Servants' Department shall be separated from the Main House, so that what passes on either side of the boundary shall be both invisible and inaudible on the other. 1 When Kerr refers to the importance of the family rooms, how- ever, he is describing the private withdrawing rooms of husband and wife on the first floor <with the man at the front, the woman at the backl, not the rooms that children would normally use. At this 64 c. / 2: . C> l ~\ ~L 65 cr: cr: 17. 'A Uentleman's Tou·n House'. 1864. This redrau·n plan shows the se~re~ation of the scrmnls from the famih·. &A5£MENT C,ROVNI> FlltST HC.ONI> THII'-.P fOV~TM l •D Clreo.~ ocwpie~ by fo.l'll·,ry o.rell$ occ.vpie.d by sevvat~ts A. l<itc;hen, & &ICI'lers Pat~-IN c. Ho~se~tS Roo101, I> 5er~"tl lh!IJ E MenservMts 11lo1>1, f Stcc61(.s C, Me.~>~-ts ~MYODikS st 5etval'\'h stllirc:As~ J' Mtti.ltr ~roo...,5 rlI tt I II lt time and with this class, children are still placed about parallel with servants: The principle of Privacy which was laid down at an early stage ofour investigation, whereby in every Gentleman's House a dis- tinct separation should be made between the Family and the Servants has a similar application Ifor children1- that is to say, the main part of the house must be relieved from the more immediate occupation of children.2 For the middle classes at least, the boundary ofprivacy was not yet drawn around the outside of the house, incorporating family as mother, father and children together. Pride of place in the house remains with the entertaining rooms. Although squeezed onto one main floor (squeezed compared to grander country house plansl Kerr uses a sequence of small spaces, of halls and lobbies, to give a sense of dignity and procession. One of Kerr's '.extra' masculine rooms, the library, is provided at the front for status and to visually separate any other workings of the house from the world outside. Finally Kerr emphasized the importance of planning the work- ing areas on a different basis to the rest of the house !which was to focus on comfort). In contrast the kitchens and other servant spaces were to be based on efficiency and function. (See Illustration 17.) Even today there are echoes of these Victorian ideas in modern semi-detached houses with ground floors focused on entertainment and status. Of course, from the 1930s all the working activities of the house from pantry to laundry had been fitted into one room- the kitchen- often small and tucked away at the back. At the same time the servants were being replaced by the wife. The suburban house still confirms status and middle-class respectability and, as Burnett says: Physically, the minimal five-roomed semi made civilised life, in middle-class terms, possible for a small family. It allowed for a proper separation of eating and living, for a proper separation between the sexes for sleeping, for cleanliness, order and rec- reation.3 Late nineteenth and early twentieth-century urban terrace The most basic form of 'through' house was the 'two up, two down'. Most of these have been demolished as there was no room for House design and women's roles 67 68 Cj~OVNtl F/... oCl r. FIRST ) FLOOR. froh1 PedroOW\ wltl1 do~bl<: !>eel proh~ly for b,U.y +tod.dler ~swell A> lllotherQ..,.,( fr.t11e..-. olitsiol~ w.c. no ~e~throoM vertlilaled lo.nler 18. A typical terraced house. built extensil'ely by speculative firms fhml the end ofthe nineteenth cent111:v. zr,: !>t40'0o,., -t ~tofthe cl1i ldren s~pr heYe.1 :Z.,5or1" ~<lbr:d. \ improvements such as bathrooms, and the stairs in particular were often steep, narrow and dangerous. The example shown in Illustration 18 is more substantial and still makes up a large part of our present housing in inner urban areas, often modernized with grants. Although they appear to be in the inner city now, when they were built they were on the edge of the city, in the suburbs. This meant that it was only better ofT workers who could afford them, those who were not dependent upon a wife's earnings to supplement the family income. As soon as houses had both back and front, the kitchen was put at the back, just as in the elaborate Victorian town house the kit- chen occupied an interior position. In the early decades of this cen- tury (apart from wartime) few married women went out to paid work. But the task of caring for husband, children and home was demanding and exhausting, involving a good deal of heavy work such as the carrying ofcoal or water. A scullery was provided for washing clothes, pots and pans, and facilities like a ventilated larder and running water made domestic work much easier. Cooking and eating meals took place in the back room, along with most other everyday activities. The Womens' Housing Sub-Committee report of 1918 which surveyed the opinions of working-class women (see chapter 3) showed that they would have preferred a separate workplace as well as this back room. How- ever, these women also wanted to retain the parlour or front room. Although this could be kept for special occasions, it could also be used as a quiet room. Plans like this make a clear distinction between back and front: friends come to the back door via an alley. acquaintances are received at the front and are met in the parlour where the best pos- sessions are kept. Early twentieth-century garden city cottage These houses were designed by Raymond Unwin and his brother-in- law, Barry Parker, following the publication of Ebenezer Howard's Garden Cities ofTomorrow in 1898. In his book Howard described a new type of environment, urban settlements with a village-like character. There were to be fewer houses to the acre so that houses had gardens, not just yards. The garden cities were planned to incor- porate factories as well as houses, but the homes would be kept sep- arate from the workplace. They perfectly express the ideology of House design and women's roles 69 70 (1ROVNP rLOOI!. l11tne. Z'*' ~tvry ja.rolt~ cotta.jt Show" her-e the ~Vi11q ~-c>o~o~~IJ vsd AS siffi"~ room , d1h111~ 11>oM , c:~Jo0 5c:...eti»>es l;.(tcJieh 'The. Rl'"cJ.i11t.tt 1 linWill 5GOII~t:(jt,~~-#>e. si.,~(<,r.v'"jroot~< ~s'" de.s®odtl"tof-l'k.. l!lc~itN...[ .,_re..t n<lll ' a"4 lltr<. t:mrha.si<l.S ~ ide<ol Offlll~t~ify.vnity. Cook•"'9 Still toolc r(M.l hue. t.ii?IVill i'D/IIGIIIfTci.~O 'tht. kCAI'th' A>-tht. ~VJ1~"'lJI.i~, ?~t"<~t#-o·<!lll!.+l"'C. wi>ht to P<l>~hh 11/l"dirty• do~t~e11ic.Woi'IC. fo~l SW({!r.:J . firtH FLOOIC.. 19. 'Garden City' colla!(e, desi!(ned by Barry Parker and Raymond Unwin in 1909. was a new model for urban settlements with a villa!(e-like character. women as keepers of the domestic sphere in the 'natural' setting. unsullied by the noise, grime and ugliness of the urban environ- ment. This plan was very influential in housing reformers' thinking and the Tudor Waiters Committee of 1918 based many of its recom- mendations upon it. It set a pattern for municipal suburban houses for the next 30 years. These architects thought houses should be designed to let in sun and air; they hated the deep. narrow houses with back extensions such as those shown in Illustration 18, where the sun might hardly ever penetrate the living room. However, their planning was some- times 'rational' to the point of ignoring the sentiments of the workers who occupied their 'cottages'. As chapter 3 shows, many of these model plans removed the parlour, replacing it with a front-to- back living room which emphasizes the 'togetherness' of the family rather than the separate needs of each of its members. These houses were designed at a time when the concept of the 'family wage' had gained strength. The man participates in the labour market in order to support himself and his family. The woman is seen as the depen- dent 'full-time' housewife. These house plans are among the earliest to assume a nuclear family. Even the relationship of the houses to each other focuses on the quality of light and air that will be received in the interior of the dwelling (using layouts based on the distances between dwellings to prevent overshadowing and so onl. The plan shown here was used by the Rowntree company in a gar- den suburb for their workers, at New Earswick, York. Here the external appearance and setting of the house is carefully contrived to recall the pre-industrial village with its supposedly harmonious social life. Later versions usually maintained the concern with lighting and ventilation conditions within the dwelling, but state economies led to increasing densities, a cutting back on the natural setting and the omission of communal facilities (which had been an essential component of the garden city movement); thus many suburban estates were very poorly serviced by shops and other facilities and were visually monotonous. Thirties semi-detached suburban house Variants ofthe plan shown in Illustration 20, page 73 were built in virtually every town in the country, in the sudden expansion of House design and women's roles 71 Makinl[ Space home ownership to the middle class and a few of the better paid members of the working class. The typical thirties plan represents the ultimate paring down of the status-conscious large Victorian town house. Minor touches of individuality served to distract atten- tion from the underlying conformity and concern for correctness and respectability. Raphael Samuel says that: The ideal home of the period, whether a bungalow or semi- detached. was a haven of peace and quiet. a modest retreat for the 'little man' lthe pipe-smoking. slipper-loving archetype ... l, a nest-like security lor prisonl for his wife. It was built on low density 'ribbon' developments . . . and symboli- cally protected from the gaze of strangers by the well-trimmed privet hedge. The middle class who flocked to take up mort- gages on the new estates lived a life that was more purely dom- estic than perhaps at any other time.4 Conservatives were delighted at the rise in home ownership. since it was believed that: The man who has something to protect and improve- a stake of some sort in the country - naturally turns his thoughts in the direction of sane. ordered. and perforce economical government. The thrifty man is seldom or never an extreme agitator. To him revolution is anathema:; Houses built for sale retained a kitchen so that cooking and eat- ing could be separated. with the possibility of employing domestic help in the kitchen. Whilst middle-class women discussed 'the ser- vant problem'. however. working-class women were voting with their feet against domestic service. Even so. domestic service was to remain the largest area of employment for women in the inter-war period. Through the use of contraceptives or self-restraint. family size decreased in the middle classes in the thirties. This reduced the amount of childcare and housework middle-class women had to do. The builders of semi-detached houses used modern bathrooms and kitchens as the selling point for their houses. Advertisements for the period show photographs of housewives who appear delighted with their new chromium-plated bathrooms. Ofcourse, for many this was probably the first time they had had a fitted bath. or many of the other improvements in heating. plumbing and cooking 72 The l<itc.heh j~ ~ Cr'ah\ped t-oo~ at the, bo.ck ofthe. ho1.4~e, I'\Ot" plttl'lne ~ as ~ sp~c-e in wlf,0 rm7- 111i ~nt e.~o)' spend1VJ~ t11'rte. These.two Y'OOh-15 were, 11s~ a~ ~inil'l'3 6.. ittti"'~ roo~s, or as livin!J ruom ancl P"riour-. 1nete. W(.l.S Still ~ ?ej'l$e. of ihe.. ft-ont roo~ G\S 1!. be?t 11 C,F:OVNP FL0oR fiR'?T FLOOR. LiKe.. the front i'TJOI'VI dowMtil r-1 tne.. 'mASter vec:4Y"OOM' W~$ 411~o ft-trnisned to i~rre~s, with olre,~in~ tqbie- 8-.. 3 r~l'le.ltelll ~irror In th~ VIII)' w'w'tc:4oW 20. A semi-detached suburban house built in the 1930s. Aimed at the rising class ofozcner occupiers. this design retained elements of'the status-con scious Victorian tou·n house. 73 Making Space facilities. In this period consumer durables such as electric irons and vacuum cleaners became available for a mass market. Builders often gave these away too, as an inducement to buy. Middle-class women became associated with the consumption of goods within the house. Later developments towards more open-plan houses, whilst per- haps using available space more effectively and breaking down tra- ditional divisions between formality and informality in behaviour, nonetheless often also meant that women had to keep much more of the ground floor tidy, clean and ready for 'show' and that many more consumer durables might become part of the display of 'best' pos- sessions for status and dignity. Post-war council house Council house building in the immediate post-war years was given high priority. The houses were much more spacious than any coun- cil housing built before or since, and council houses were intended to appeal to all sections of society, living side by side in 'mixed commu- nities'. At the same time, these houses strongly reflect the post-war idealization of family life, seeing the house as a cheerful and comfor- table place where wives would find homemaking a pleasure and not a burden. The Dudley Committee, consisting of eight women and 12 men, recommended in their report published in 1944 that: 'Local auth- orities should have greater regard to the views of housewives and should make use of their powers to eo-opt suitable women to their Housing Committee.'6 The secretary to the Dudley Committee, Judith Ledeboer, who was an architect, said that 'The standard set was what the committee thought was the minimum at which a woman could bring up a family while doing the housework herself.'7 So women's views were seen as important but only in their capacity as housewives. The plan shown in Illustration 21, page 75, continues the single front-to-back living room from the 1920s, but by now cooking has been removed to the kitchen, so this room is purely for family relax- ation and leisure. The plan also offers a separate dining room, in order to remove eating from the housewife's major workplace, the kitchen. By the 1950s, space standards and amenities were being severely cut back in council housing. There was a drive to produce 74 FIRST FLOOtt, 21. This council house. designed in 1949. reflects the post-war idealization offamily life. l 75 Making Space as many houses as possible, and more attention was paid to quantity than to quality. Much of the flexibility offered by the sheer space of the forties plan was lost. Attitudes to the 'proper' location of the eat- ing of meals varied tas they still do todayl. As space was cut from t.hese plans, the dining room became part of the circulation; it was usually incorporated into a hall at the bottom of the stairs or as an alcove over the kitchen. The formal dining room of the forties plan was the first to go. The parlour was also on its way out for good. The Dudley Report thought, 'the expression "parlour" carries an impli- cation which is old-fashioned and obsolete.' By the time the Parker- Morris Report was written in the 1960s (see below), it was not men- tioned at all. Finally. the kitchen remained small, in some local authority areas, despite continuing demands through this period for families to eat here. The Parker-Morris Report again admitted to this demand and commented on earlier plans which saw eating in the kitchen as a working-class habit, and deliberately tried to prevent it by not allowing enough space: Even in a kitchen which is not planned for the family to eat in, and which is primarily planned as a working centre, there should be somewhere two or three people can sit down and eat; because we are convinced that, whether or not there is room, that is what they will do. We have heard it said on more than one occasion that the kitchen should be planned so that it is impossible to take meals in it, with a view to raising the social and living standards of the occupiers. We believe that this is an unsuitable motive on which to choose a plan; and even if it were not it would be necessary now. after ten or fifteen years of try- ing it out. to recognise that it is misconceived.8 The sixties and the seventies The amount of space provided in housing declined steadily through- out the 1950s. In 1961. a further report on housing standards was published. written by a committee chaired by Sir Parker-Morris and entitled Homes for Today and Tomorrow. This noted trends such as the greater demand by single people for separate homes rather than living with their families or as lodgers, and the need for housing to provide more than a minimal 'roofover the head'- to cater for a col- lection of individuals with aspirations and with differing and some- 76 1he k.itcbt.n I~CIIes~11edM bed ~n ef(iciehi worbpA~for 0~6fBKOVl, it loo!<.\ fl\111 l>otn livi..~ roo~><+ IAini\'\-' <~~'"~ . bed 22. T his 1960s design for a five-person nuclear family is still in current use. f i i V : > T f-LOO~ A"W~Mte-r·~rTTO'lo\. a..~ iMI c-1-..ildl"eeoSi>edn>o"'s t~re ~~riv~tnA,:;~11> ille. {1~ tloo 77 Making Space times conflicting interests. <The report remarked, somewhat optimistically as it turned out, that husbands were sharing domestic work in an increasingly egalitarian fashion!) In order to allow individuals to follow more fully their own lives within the family house structure, the Parker-Morris report recom- mended more space and better heating - including heating in the bedrooms. This would allow all rooms to be used during the day; children could use their bedrooms as 'own rooms' for study, play or entertaining friends. At the same time, Government design guides such as Housing the Family <see chapter 5 above), which architects used for guidelines in designing actual houses, perpetuated a very traditional picture of the nuclear family and women's role within it. The house plan from Housing the Family shown in Illustration 22, page 77, reflects some of these ambiguities in attempting to des- cribe and fulfil the needs of many different individuals within a small, narrow frontage, family house. It provides, for instance, a small 'spare' room at the front of the house to be used as an extra bedroom, sewing room and so on. Of course this room also serves (rather like the library in the Kerr plan) to hide the more 'private' family areas behind. The plan also tries to provide space both for separate dining and for eating in the kitchen <at least half in and half out of the kitchen) without providing either a proper. separate dining room or a kitchen big enough for the whole family to eat in comfortably. It offers a small hall as the residual version of the parlour: 'a neutral space in which to deal with visitors whom one wishes neither to leave on the step nor to invite to meet the family', but which looks straight into the dining area and beyond to the kitchen putting this whole area potentially 'on display'. The kitchen acts as a hub to the plan. looking into both the liv- ing room and dining area. It is therefore neither a separate work- place (to contain noise and smells) nor physically part of the other rooms in the house. It is still planned on the workbench principle advocated by Kerr and designed around one person, almost cer- tainly presumed to be the wife. The living room at the back is still the largest room in the house and has a large picture window overlooking the small back garden. The Parker-Morris Report set compulsory space standards for public sector housing. and was abolished by the government in 1981. It was the last government manual to describe how the inter- 78 iors of houses and flats should be laid out (although many local authorities still use design guides of 'preferred' plans). During the last 20 years there has been an overall decline in the number, con- structional quality and space standards of council houses. This has affected women particularly badly. Women with families have to take primary responsibility for the consequences of damp, inaccess- ible or tightly and badly planned homes. At the same time, the con- vergence in space standards of middle-class and working-class women's homes, and to some extent a convergence of their roles, means that all women who work in the home as wives and mothers experience similar problems and contradictions in the way these houses are designed. Conclusion We have tried to show how the plans of houses have changed, re- flecting and refracting changes in society. Over this period, the house has become synonymous with the nuclear family unit, although 60 per cent of households no longer match this model. The house now takes for granted a separation between paid work outside the home and leisure within it, which would be difficult for an eight- eenth-century weaver to comprehend. Our attitudes to privacy have changed since Kerr's primary classification. It now incorpor- ates the whole family, and is not just the prerogative of the middle classes. Class divisions in housing have decreased, especially since the second world war. Middle-class women have taken on the tasks that were previously done by servants. With the introduction of new technologies, housework has become less physically exhausting, but with new standards of cleanliness and order has expanded to fill the time of all classes of women responsible for it. As class distinctions have diminished, tensions and conflicts have arisen in ideas about the 'proper' use of the house, for example in the placing of meals or domestic services. Women's traditional working activities have removed from the living room to the kitchen, leaving the former solely for recreation and relaxation. Patterns offormality and infor- mality in the treatment of guests and friends have also influenced spatial divisions. Middle-class children are no longer banished to the nursery in the daytime and childcare patterns have changed. All of these factors have had ramifications for the design of 79 House design and women's roles Making Space houses and for women's work and position within the home. Many of the house plans we have used here are explicit models of how houses ought to be, and the way people should live. Even in cases where women's voices have been heard, priorities about what is built into the house and what is left out have been predominantly chosen by men. Thus. a strong demand from working-class women at the turn of the century for a parlour was given a low priority. Demands for space to eat comfortably in the kitchen have been reiterated in design manuals such as Parker-Morris, but again and again, the actual houses have had tiny kitchens. In the final decision-making, women's real needs, desires and aspirations are not taken as seriously as male-dominated ideas about the 'appropriate' house for the family. 80 6. Housing the family In the family, woman's perspective of day-to-day life is set by the experience of caring for children, husband and family and looking after the house, sometimes combined with going to work outside the home. In addition, there is a constricting framework imposed on the woman from outside our experience - the conventionally accepted view of family life. The role of the woman in this family is a house- wife and loving wife/mother. If she works, then she must be able to do her housewife job more efficiently. The man goes out to work, drives the car, needs to be fed, and has a space for do-it-yourself activities which are his contributions to home life. Her world is less significant than the public world of work, money and male exchange of views to which he goes. This patriarchal view is a synthesis of all the parts of family life which reinforce the nuclear family: the loving couple of cornflakes adverts and Sunday colour supplements, with 2.2 contented chil- dren. There is no conflict and no change in relationships - all that happens is that children grow up. This stereotype typifies the 1950s, and we might expect people who design houses now to have a more sophisticated notion offamily life. However, the state manual of housing design, Housing the Family,1 to which all council and many private houses are meant to conform, is based firmly on this view of women's lives. Underlying the text of Housing the Family runs a particularly clear summary of the ideology of the family that is the basis of all current housing design - men's and women's roles, and the relationship of spaces to these roles and assumptions about women's subordinate position. This chapter examines these assumptions in detail in order to understand how all housing design promotes them. Detailed studies of how people use dwellings (the basis for 81 MakinR Space design guides) shows that researchers have asked questions which in some ways have led to improvements in the quality of women's lives. It is now accepted that women with children stand in front of kitchen sinks a lot, so there should be a window to look out of; and that if there is a garden, the window should look on to the garden so that children's play can be watched. However, this research is based on particular questions, and the choice of questions determines the answers - and produces a window by the kitchen sink. The researchers asked: 'How can life with your hands in the sink be a little more pleasant?', not: 'Why do women spend so much time at the kitchen sink?'. Housing the Family contains a whole checklist of such questions: 'Is there a convenient place indoors where small children can play within sight of the kitchen working area?' 'Does the kitchen have some view of the outside world, ·callers, passers-by, etc?' Women's experience of living in houses is incorporated into housing design by a sort of remote control process. The dynamics of everyday life for women are profoundly misunderstood because questions such as these emerge from the stereotype view of nuclear family life so vividly portrayed in Housing the Family. The 1961 Parker-Morris Report, Homes for Today and Tomor- row, set out to describe the way people live and to make recommen- dations for the design ofhousing.2 It proposed a new way ofsetting housing standards by outlining design problems rather than provid- ing 'standard' plans, as earlier housing manuals had, and was intended to free architects from stereotyped planning prevalent in the 1950s. In this way, it was also more liberal in outlook than many of the subsequent design guides such as Housing the Family and Space in the Home, which offered one, particular, conventional interpretation of how the design problem might be solved. Housing the Family is a collection of bulletins reprinted in 1974 and is in current use for both public and private housing. It covers various aspects of housing design, including the arrangement of internal space, site considerations, safety in the home and children playing. Other design bulletins, such as Space in the Home,3 con- centrate on particular rooms and their functions, for example, kit chens and bathrooms. The stated intentions of these bulletins, which are compiled by teams ofexperts including architects, sociolo- gists, quantity surveyors and administrators, are to improve 'both the convenience and efficiency' of the use of spaces and to 'promote 82 higher standards and better value for money'.4 They appear in every architect's and builder's office and are extremely influential in the planning and designing of houses. Most designers use them selectively, picking at information here and there, not questioning the ideology behind the infor- mation. They are used as if they provide 'objective' information rather than value-laden assumptions about women's social role and family life. The text is written from a masculine viewpoint - by men, for men, and about women and children. It reinforces the identification of the designer with the male breadwinner by refer- ring to him as 'you'; the housewife is referred to as 'she'. For example: If you come l}ome in dirty working clothes, can you get direct from the main door to a place where they can be kept and to a place where you can wash?' And, 'How far does the housewife have to carry the rubbish from the kitchen to the bin store, and can she manage without going through living areas?'5 (my emphasis) Design guide stress the separation of work (a means of earning a living) and survival (activities necessary to stay alive) by empha- sizing both their different locations and the gender stereotyping of responsibility for them. The head of the household- man and wage- earner - spends most of his day in paid work to support himself and his family, and for him the home is a place of comfort and rest. The woman, the wife and mother, even ifshe also has paid employment, 1200 When the children play indoors Mother needs to be able to see them from the kitchen, but they should be away from the kitchen equipment and not under her feet. 1430 The baby nec!ds a place whe!re it is quiet to sleep The toddler needs a place for play, where toys and-other playthings can be concentrated, so the housewife does not have to be for ever tidying up. 1900 When Father makes or repairs something, he needs to be out of Mother's way in the kitchen and where he will not disturb sleeping children. 23. 'Mrand Mrs Average' as portrayed in Housing the Family, 1974. Housing the family 83 Making Space is expected to assume the role of houswife, and for her the home is the place where she does work. The conventional assumption that a 'woman's place is in the home' is clearly perpetuated in design guides. In contemporary Western society, acknowledgement ofthe indi- vidual's right to privacy is not extended to women. Whilst thought to be tied to the house more than any other member of the family, the housewife spends her time in spaces that service the family: that is, the kitchen and the 'master bedroom'. The privacy, and in Virgi- nia Woolfs words, 'a room of one's own' that everyone needs to establish any kind of independent identity in the nuclear family, seems to be denied to her. People and activities are packaged in a standardized format where they bear little resemblance to human beings. Mr and Mrs Average and their children have become mere emblems in plan and elevation. @··<9··~··@··@··@ un-~"" KNPI"' lood hble ltylng Oit.pot.inu w....., ancld•Nt e,,,,.. cfwane ,....... c-...nt Pun•nt food C..t•i"' twty Stecking Wahong .._.., ............* orplttet Puulng•.,,.v llniO dllftn CD ® ® ® @) l @ Arr•ne•ment or ectlvhy zone.s 84 .... Woriltowrl- .'-."."."'""' w.-t• Wor.. wrhu Equ...-nt .... C-"t• Worllturl.e. Workwrt~oee I Of lloble WotkturfiCt Equtpmtnt Food ,... I I ho1 EqulcJ..,.nl Equipmenl food [[]] [[]] [l; Q1li HBT ifi ~-~-~ -~-~!~nhl"u-=~J~·~:= 24. Activity sequences and arranf?ement ofactivity zones. from Spaces in the Home, 1972. Drying This design guide definition of the family excludes many people - single parent families, communal households, old people - and refers only to the 'nuclear family' which is not a reality for most people anyway. Within that very limited definition, roles are des- cribed in a very conventional way, for example, there are no signs that men cook, children clean or that women repair houses. Spaces and activities are described so as to seem scientific, and therefore objective. Charts and graphs indicate the 'optimum' work- top height, and 'activity sequences' represent the 'meal preparation process'. Spaces are divided into 'zones' with specific functions: the kitchen includes 'zones' for preparation/wash-up, mixing, cooking, serving, eating: each described separately and as a sequence in great detail, with illustrations even of the fitments by which tea towels can be hung. Possible layouts for bathrooms are drawn as a table of 'combined appliance and activity spaces for one-, two- and three-appliance layouts'. The houses themselves are distinguished by categories of physical space with either a wide or narrow front- age, and by occupants in numerical groups of one- two- or three- person dwellings. Time and activity charts document a typical day in the life of The Younger Family (parents and three children- a boy aged 7 and girls aged 3 and 1) and The Older Family (parents- mother working part-time, boy aged 23, girl 20 and boy 14). The day is divided into activities which occur at half-hourly or hourly intervals and involve some, and occasionally all, the members of the household in activi- ties related to particular spaces. The neat divisions ofjobs into regular intervals of time describe an unrealistic routine: this rationalization of time and tasks does not relate to most women's daily routine, especially those with small children. The assumption that the drudgery of housework can be elimi- nated simply by providing efficient, easy-to-clean surfaces and easy- to-reach storage permeates these design guides. Whilst the inten- tion is laudable, their analysis shows a significant misunderstand- ing about the nature of housework. Research shows that women spend an average of 77 hours of week doing housework.6 Most women would agree that whilst some labour-saving devices can relieve 'heavy' work and save time, housework still takes this long because expected standards of cleanliness have risen. It is in the nature of housework that it expands to fill the time available and Housing the family 85 86 0700 0710 0130 0930 1130 1200 ~d 1230 ~~ 1430 r"W1 " ~ p~ ~~ ~~~ ri rJ f[ (~~ L~) ~ at 25. Time and actil'ity chart- documents the - "typical" da y: ( rom Housing the Family. 1974. r ~A 1 ~ that it is never done; no sooner has the floor been cleaned than it starts getting dirty again. Design guides assume that housework is not an activity shared by all members of the household, but is done by the woman. The recommendations conclude that the house must be 'easy to run to reduce the burden on the housewife' and in order 'to give working wives a better chance of doing both jobs without too much strain.'7 The kitchen is categorized as a space which does not need to change as the family develops. Preparing food is not a sociable activity in which everyone can participate, and the kitchen is designed to be used by one person- the wife and mother. The work- tops resemble laboratory benches; she is assisted only by a range of consumer durables such as the cooker, washing machine, spin drier, tumble drier, and dish-washer. Design guides describe the kitchen as the 'work centre' of the house- once the realm ofthe domestic servants in the more affluent Victorian houses, it is now assumed to be the realm of the house- wife. The guides recommend that the kitchen be a separate room, designed to make cooking and serving food as efficient and con- venient as possible, without the rest of the family and especially visitors being able to see, hear or smell them. Drawings show opti- mum worktop heights, circulation patterns through and around the kitchen, and storage facilities. Although eating in the kitchen is mentioned in some guides, it is not considered to be of central importance as it is by many women. Design guides are only a part of a way of thinking that divides the business of living into hermetic compartments. Housing the Family, for instance, does not deal with the relationship of the home to the immediate locality for the necessary support services: shops, schools, health centres. These are deemed to be the province of other design guides. The relationship between the home and the 'world immediately outside' is reduced to the patterns of circulation and access of the family and visitors, and callers who fall into two main categories, the regular and the intermittent: 'The milkman, the postman, the dustman, the meter reader and the fuel delivery man come into the former group; the deliverer of garden materials or the man coming to repair the roof fall into the latter.' (my emphasis)8 The house requires servicing from a range of specialists. There is no mention of the importance of social relationships and communal activities for Housing the family 87 Making Space women and children. Baking, washing, bathing, which were once communal activities, have been privatized within the child-centred nuclear family. The houses, separate from one another, symbolize the import- ance of individuality, and stress the self-containment of family life. They are illustrated only in plan form, from which it is very difficult to imagine the quality ofeach room and ofthe house as a whole. Many ofthe design guide recommendations are embodied in the plan of a house illustrated in Space in the Home. This house is divided into separate rooms for specific functions and is designed to accommodate one household (see chapter 5 for illustrations and more detailed description). The graduation of rooms from public to private is represented in their placing within the house; the most private rooms for the family are at the back of the house and upstairs. Visitors to the house may be confined to the ground floor; the kitchen (accessible from the back door) and hall are separate from the living and dining rooms. In this it represents the sequestering of the nuclear family, and the domestication of all the activities associated with survival. There are no public or communal facilities; it accommodates an introverted family lifestyle, in which household duties are confined to a small space set deep within the plan, and protected by the pri- vate back garden and boundary walls. This critique has tried to expose some of the assumptions made about women and houses in design guides, not simply to add to the checklist of things designers should take notice of, but to begin to suggest house designs that reflect the richness and value of women's experience. Such designs would neither assume that women are part of nuclear family units with children and husband, nor would they try to contain and confine women who do care for children. 88 7. Working with women In 1978 the Feminist Design Collective was formed. Its purpose, loosely defined, was to understand and develop a feminist approach to architecture through discussion and architectural work. Two of the projects I am going to describe were undertaken by this group. In 1980 the Feminist Design Collective split and Matrix was formed. Groups within Matrix formed to undertake different proj- ects: an exhibition on housing design called 'Home Truths', this book, and architectural work for women's community groups. The ideas outlined in this chapter are based on lots ofdiscussion. This is my interpretation of our shared experience. Women working in Matrix (and in the Feminist Design Collec- tive between 1978 and 1980) have been attempting to develop a way of designing buildings together, which values women's involvement in all the stages of the evolution of a building. The stages include recognizing the need for a building, obtaining finance for it, organiz- ing it, designing, building and finally using it. Working together as a group, and working with other women's groups, have been among our most important experiences. Working and making decisions col- lectively has developed our confidence and ability to pursue and articulate elusive ideas. We have all been trained conventionally by and with men, who have often devalued or ignored our work, describing it as 'emotional' or 'confused'. As practising architects we have often felt alienated and marginalized. In order to revalue our ideas and feelings, we have always tried to do work together, to go to meetings and give talks in pairs and to discuss work in progress with a larger group. We have learnt from working with women who have not been trained as architects. They have questioned conventional assump- tions about design and have been excited by the possibilities of ere- 89 Making Space ating buildings that suit their needs. The re-emergence of the women's movement over the last 15 years has meant that women have seen the need for, and started to make, new kinds of buildings. Places to live in together, refuges where women can be safe from men's violence, women's centres that are both meeting places and advice centres, places for teaching and learning skills previously inaccessible to women. Women have also been involved in creating places for children which are not formal state institutions, but which respond to the differing needs of chil- dren and grown-ups. New buildings need to be evolved which appro- priate for these new ways of organizing and living our lives. At present most women's centres and refuges, for instance, are housed in old and badly repaired buildings. Yet buildings help or hinder the development of new ideas in all sorts of subtle ways. The projects described in this chapter are not ideal women's buildings but they are a beginning. Except for Stockwell Health Centre in South Lon- don they were all conversions of existing buildings. People often ask us, 'If women design buildings, will the build- ings be different or better?' If women collectively organize, design and make buildings that suit their needs rather than having to fit into what exists already Ibuildings created by a patriarchal culture) then the buildings are bound to look and feel different. We have to begin by being clear about our needs and not just wanting buildings to look different. Conventionally, great stress is put on the external appearance of buildings; this especially undervalues the experience and knowledge of women who use them. Buildings are for the most part just background, not important for what they look like but for how people can live and work in them. We are trying to enable women to make buildings that are like good clothes. They should do the job they are there for, be useful, comfortable, likeable, and then every now and again they should be just a little bit special. Designing with women's groups A new health centre was to be built in Stockwell, an area desper- ately lacking health facilities, and Stockwell Health Centre group came together through a meeting of community representatives. The group was concerned with the sort ofhealth care the community needed, placing emphasis on preventive medicine, community use 90 and self-help. Drawings had been made long ago by the local auth- ority architect for the Area Health Authority, and the health centre group very quickly realized that they needed a different kind of building. 'When we were thinking about it, we kept having to look at this horrible plan and feeling irritated with it, so we thought, "Let's have one of our own."' The Feminist Design Collective became involved at this point. For the health centre group it was important that we were a group of women, rather than one individual, so that we would understand the process of working in groups. They did not want 'an expert com- ing in and taking over' but wanted to retain control of the ideas for the building as it developed. 'We were feeling insecure enough already. We wanted help expressing our own ideas. Having people around showing how our ideas could be translated into a building made us more confident.' The group had written a report for the health authority describ- ing the kind ofcentre they wanted. They saw clearly that the type of building would strongly influence the possibility of implementing their ideas. They knew from experience in local community cam- paigns that the design of buildings affects women's lives in all sorts of ways. They had also learnt that loose and informal ways of orga- nizing the health centre could be just as effective as the rigid ones imposed by the health authority; their ways of organizing Would enable the community to have control ofthe building. We all found it extremely difficult to define what a radically dif- ferent kind of health centre would be like. Two principles emerged, reiterated in endless meetings with the health authority: that the centre should fulfil the needs of the community as a resource, and that it should feel open, inviting and easy to use. These principles were to be demonstrated clearly and simply by a building. We worked out a design with the health centre group by imagining how the building could be used, discussing which activi- ties could overlap, how the space would affect the way people relate to each other. These discussions suggested various arrangements and we made several different sketch designs. For instance, in one suggestion there was a cafe at the centre ofeverything, and all other spaces were arranged around it. In another the building was to have a street running through its centre, with all the drop-in facilities along both sides. Both of these ideas had disadvantages, but they were useful because each one expressed spatially an idea we had dis- Working with women 91 Making Space cussed about how the building could be used. The health centre group discussed these sketches with other local groups and at a public meeting. As well as involving people not centrally working on the campaign, this consultation process also meant that women in the health group explained and discussed the various possibilities and in that process clarified and extended their own ideas. The final design was L-shaped, with a cafe/meeting place on the corner, and creche and community health worker's office (who is the centre's co-ordinator> behind. The creche opened onto the garden enclosed by the 'L'. One arm of the 'L' along the existing main street housed the 'drop-in' facilities where people could get information and the services related to health care. These were to include chiro- pody, childcare clinics, osteopathy, as well as rooms for a dentist and optician. The other arm was to contain the more private offices and consulting rooms. The cafe and related spaces were intended for use in the evening as a more general community resource. The alternative design for Stockwell Health Centre (Illustra- tion 26, page 93) was part of the ammunition the health centre group needed in the struggle for a locally controlled health centre. It was never actually built although some suggestions were incorpor- ated into the local authority designed building. Our job was to dis- cover with the group how a health centre, democratically run and open to the community, could be designed, and to help the group convince the Area Health Authority that the community's ideas were realizable. Lambeth Women's Workshop <Illustration 27, page 94) is a car- pentry and joinery teaching workshop in South London. It runs beginners' courses aimed especially at women with children, black, and working-class women. It came into existence through dis- cussions in a Women's Aid group about women's employment. It was organized, designed, and converted by women, and is run by women now. We looked at possible spaces with the Workshop group. The place that finally seemed most appropriate was a unit in a large industrial building. The space chosen had the advantage of being already weatherproof, with good natural lighting and adequate ser- vice lifts for bringing up materials; however, it had an inhospitable atmosphere, reminding one of harsh working conditions. The women on the management committee wanted the work- shop space to assert a friendly working atmosphere. One way to do 92 o"J Q(j:(:() u.,.apo-~0.-3faH"f="'=4S ~ W(loy i~ 26. Plan for the Stockwell Health Centre, south London - a proposed design based on community needs. U ! f t - / w • i~in~ oov r:. ':) 93 27. Interior o(lhl' [,amheth Women's Traininp Workshop. south Lunclon. this was to makl' curving walls. to contrast directly with the straight lines and right angles of the factory . But we found this did not make economic ust• of the space. Finally it was broken into more intimate areas by. for instance. raising the floor of the sitting and kitcht•n spacl' to giVl' low window sills and ceiling height. In making dt•cisions about the way the workshop was designed. wt• talked about ;wsthetics. about the proportions of the space. and tlw relationship bt•tween windows. light and columns. Architects an• traim•d to discuss and think about such ideas in an abstr-act way. which was obviously inappropriate. distancing the world from our t•xpprience and making it lt•ss part of ourselves and our evet·yday lin•s. Wt> rcalizt•d we had to find ways of talking about the qualities of thl' span•; how light or dark. soft m· hard. high or wide the space should lw. Wt> m•edPd to find a languagl' accessible to everyone involvl'd. Wt• havl' continut•d thinking about this. It means starting from fl'l'lings about thl' span•s woml'n know and their everyda.v l'Xpt•rit•ncps in tht•m. and using that inf(lrmation to gradually build up a pil'lun• of tht• m•w span•. 94 TH£ 51Zf OFlHE Wmtl EATliS ffflPARID TO 112 GREENWOQ) RD\~ TVte plt'M-1 Of tl1e I 'WtlYM ' ~Clit15'' you ARE IN A R.OOM THIS JIIG 28. Drawings that compare the building used by the east London Dalston Children's Centre with its new premises. a former warm bath house. Dalston Children's Centre was set up by a group of women in Hackney, North London, and provides facilities for women and chil- dren which are not normally available. Women with pre-school chil- dren can 'drop in' and either be with or leave their children for a few 95 Making Space hours. It runs daytime classes for women, and children of school age can go there before and after school, to specific classes like music, theatre, swimming, or just to play. The centre also runs classes and play schemes at weekends and in the school holidays. The centre had been housed in various temporary premises for three years. Matrix was involved both in making the present temporary prem- ises usable (they moved in September 1982) and in finding perma- nent premises and doing the architectural work necessary. The building that will be their permanent premises is an old bath-house, very different from the house the Children's Centre is in at present. Imagining how a bath-house can be changed into a children's centre is not easy. We tried comparing the new building with their existing building. We drew pictures of how we thought the building could be, and worked with the various groups who use the centre to get their ideas. Matrix also ran a short course for the women who were to be particularly responsible for making design decisions. The course included sessions about the building programme, discussing which decisions have to be made at different times, and about draw- ings. For instance, the women measured the room we were in and drew it to get an idea of how scale drawings relate to real spaces. In each of these jobs we have wanted to spend far more time designing the building than is conventionally allowed for: talking, trying out possibilities and finding ways women can become more confident about expressing their ideas about buildings. The more people are involved in the process the more time is needed for every- one's ideas to be expressed and considered seriously. Drawings and other design tools We learnt a lot about using drawings through working on Lambeth Women's Workshop. At first we did not realize how difficult is was for women on the management committee to get a feel of the build- ing from the plans, of where the windows and doors and walls were, how big or small the space was. Next we tried drawing proposals with work benches and people in them, which seemed to be even more confusing. The management committee felt that we were presenting 'fait accompli' choices, 'TV dinner drawings', for instant consumption or rejection. At that point we all started again. This time we used cut 96 out bits of paper for all the work benches and machinery and walls and windows. Everybody moved the bits of paper around trying out different arrangements and seeing how big things were in relation to each other. This really seemed to work. Women's experiences in different workplaces became relevant and useful and each woman felt involved in the process. We did not necessarily come to conclu- sions about the design, but everyone understood the problem. With Stockwell Health Centre the first thing we did was to write on existing plans with big arrows pointing out all the criti- cisms different women had made. The group involved women with different experiences of health care, as 'patients' and as health workers. The comments varied from descriptions of what it is like being in a waiting room using an electronic call system if you are deaf or blind, to what sort of atmosphere is needed for giving family planning advice to women who are nervous. Next, we did bubble diagrams showing the relationships between different activities. It was in general discussion that the idea evolved for a cafe around which the building could informally focus. This proved to be a key idea for the alternative scheme. On this first relationship diagram the cafe was drawn in a circle, relat- ing to the other activity places in circles with arrows to them. Immediately the cafe became circular in people's minds. While we had made a distinction between diagram and building shape, others had not. When we later drew a square cafe on a plan, several women were disappointed and we were then able to discuss our different mental pictures. This seems quite a good example of accidental mis- communication which provoked useful ideas by chance, rather than carefully thought-out use of drawings. We were trying to find ways the group could get a feel of manipulating the spaces and take an active part in the process. We found we needed to do drawings that looked as throwaway as possible. We used scrap paper, and unruled lines - anything to overcome the feeling that once something was drawn it could not be changed. A different experience of using drawings came from working with Balham Food and Book Co-operative, to redesign and build their new shop, an old four-storey house and shop in Balham High Street, South London. They had already been in existence for a year, and wanted to move to a more public shop, and to be able to open a cafe, provide meeting rooms etc. They wanted to work with another co-operative. Working with women 97 Makinp Space Two women from Matrix were working with the Women's Building Co-op. so we were able to function as a 'design and build' group. The design was evolved with the Balham Food and Book Co- op; drawings and 'a specification of works' (that is the description of work to be done) were done by a combination of designers and builders. Particularly successful were drawings of how the shop would look. These were colour sketches done by women trained in building, not architecture. We wanted to challenge the idea that only designers can imagine what spaces will be like. Builders are used to working three-dimensionally and understand how spaces relate to each other through specific and detailed experience. The drawings did not use complicated or formal drawing techniques and so were very immediate. They made the Balham Food and Book Co- op enthusiastic about the building and it was then much easier to discuss details of the proposal. When working on Dalston Children's Centre, we started mak- ing models which could be taken to pieces and reassembled differ- ently. Lots of different groups use the centre and so we had to find ways of involving as many women as possible in imagining what the building would be like. As well as doing sketches of different parts of !JH 29. A m'"''''· u·ith IIHII'l'ahll' parts. of'!he Children's Centre. the building converted in different ways, we made a rough card- board model in which all the parts of the building that could not be changed were fixed and all the rest could be moved around. We found this model very useful during discussions. The relative size and position of spaces could be judged and women could immedi- ately show what they meant when suggesting how the space could be used. The buildings Dalston Children's Centre has from the first had a comfortable friendly atmosphere because creating that feeling has been a prior- ity for the group. In discussions about the bath-house conversion, the group expressed concern that a newly converted building with large spaces, although more flexible in use, could feel cold and insti- tutional. It has been important to find ways of making sure that does not happen. The same issue has been confronted over all the buildings or pro- posed buildings I have described. They are all in different ways places where people, women especially, can meet and share experiences. This is not their primary function, but the 'client' group in each case emphasized that the place should be welcoming, comfortable and easy to find your way around. Each building involved a quite com- plex picture of activities and functions that were to remain closely interconnected. For instance, spaces where women could sit and talk had some link with the other activities going on in the building. The health centre group wanted a cafe instead of a large wait- ing room, so that people could go to the health centre informally. Also a woman might get reassurance about a child's health, for instance, simply by talking to others in this space. The entrance to the Lambeth Women's Workshop is an informal space, which includes a sitting area, a kitchen, and an office. Each area is distinct but not separated by walls. The group did not want the workshop space to be completely cut off, but it is noisy and has potentially dangerous machinery in it. Two large windows allow you to see who is in the workshop and watch what they are doing. Without getting in the way, women who are new to the workshop can get a feel of the work that goes on there. To say that buildings should feel friendly and be able to accom- modate different sorts of social exchange may sound curious. It is Working with women 99 Making Space obvious that they should. Yet if you think of the public buildings you know, from hospitals to workplaces, you will find there are few you could describe as either friendly or accommodating. They are intimidating to all except those who control them. Making buildings where most people can feel at home involves changing who controls buildings. It also involves thinking about qualities that are hard to define and would be considered soppy on an architectural brief but are nonetheless important. Being an architect We have learnt that it is important to explain on each job what an architect does, because so much of her work is invisible, unlike the builder's work, for instance. Conventionally, an architect's role is to find out what kind of building is wanted, what money is available and how it can best be used, then what spaces are needed in the building, how people are going to use the building and what it should feel like. Listening to what people want can be complex, depending on how many people are involved in making decisions about the build- ing. The accumulated information will come in various forms- and it has got to be made into usable information related to the proposed building. This means architects need to know how to organize infor- mation. They are taught techniques for doing this which are assumed to be universally applicable. 'Designing' is used to describe thinking out the possible ways of organizing and shaping the building according to all the gathered information. This process is more or less creative depending on the job; often the design decisions being made are quite small in them- selves, especially in conversions, and may be limited by all sorts of regulations so that 'designing' may be rather like doing a jig-saw puzzle. Once the design for the building is agreed, it has to be checked with all the authorities who control drainage, fire regulations, structural details, etc. The architect has to produce 'working draw- ings', rather like maps, which tell the builder where doors and win- dows and walls are to be. Also there is a written document !either a 'specification of works' or a 'bill of quantities', depending on the size of the jobl that describes which materials to use, and other details that cannot be drawn. The builder will use this information to work 100 out the cost of the building. When building work finally starts this information tells the builder exactly what to do. However, there are always some details that change, or cannot be decided beforehand. The architect is there to make sure the builder has all the necessary information, to ensure that the work is done as specified and to a 'reasonable' standard, and to mediate between the builder and the client. Arguments between them will be either about money or the standard of work, and until such a dispute gets so bad that it is taken to law, the architect's professional role is to say what is a 'reasonable' standard, and to act as a kind of adjudicator between the two parties. It is an ambiguous role because the architect is paid by the client, not the builder. The whole process of designing and getting a building built is conventionally described as only a technical process. The ideology underlying how information is organized, whom you listen to, what questions you ask, which parts of the process could be open to group involvement- these are not generally discussed by architects or by those who employ them. Nonetheless, a large part of the architect's job is a technical job and this means the architect does have technical skills. These skills are: - - - - - - - obtaining information; organizing information, being able to juggle spaces and their rela- tionship to each other, either within an existing building or by creating a new one; understanding the consequences of practical decisions, the effect on the drainage layout of where the bathroom is positioned, or whether it is possible to knock a wall down without the building collapsing etc.; being able to make assessments about what a building will feel and look like, before it exists; knowing what is feasible - financially (how much will it cost?l, structurally (will it fall down?), functionally (how big does a bath- room have to be?), constructionally (keeping the rain out), envir- onmentally (keeping the heat in); knowing enough about building materials and services like plumbing to know what works and how; knowing and being able to deal with the building, planning and environmental health regulations; Working with women 101 Making Space - providing information (drawings, writing) for the builders; - organizing and running the contract between builder and client. The question for us as feminist architects is, how do we use these skills to further the liberation of women? ArchitaciB. buildan and 'clients" I want to describe our experience ofthe relationships between archi- tect, 'client' and builders. I am not trying to write a radical critique of the building industry, or to suggest a blueprint for architectural practice. The experiences I am describing have come not from a con- scious plan to work in a predetermined way, but from a personal sense of unease about how architects are supposed to work. For me and for others in Matrix this attempt to find a more appropriate way of working had led us to learn a building skill, and to work on site as builders or on design-and-build projects. This has given us an under- standing of the realities of day-to-day building, but also has made us conscious in very practical ways of how divided the building indus- try is. The relationship between architect, client and builder has always been a class relationship. The client has the money, the builder the craft skills. and the architect Ifrom an educated middle- class backgroundl is paid by the client to provide the design and to manage the job. Nowadays the building industry is extremely com- plex, and management at different levels, from 'foreman' to contract manager, has been created in response to the increased size of build- ing projects, but the fundamental relationships are the same. There is a hierarchy of status within the building industry, with building workers 1I have usually called them builders) at the bottom. The architect lstill from a predominantly middle-class back- ground! works either for a private architectural practice or private building firm. or is a salaried employee of the state. It is only on fairly small-scale work that architect and building worker come into direct contact. Nonetheless. when they do. as on the projects I have described. the class and status differences are obvious. The architectural profession llike other professions) has attempted to define an area of work and gain control of it. It has been aided in this by the growing complexity of legislation, regula- tions and bureaucracy around building, which have developed as buildings have become technically more complex. Architects and 102 builders are mutually dependent on each other in the production of buildings, while both are dependent on the client for finance. Exa- mining the relationship between architect, builder and client also involves questioning the way their individual roles are defined. Is it appropriate that we should automatically adopt the profession's idea of the architect as I have described it above? For a while the builder's skills are at least as essential as the architect's, they are not valued in the same way. Architects are paid more than building workers, and they usually have more control over how they do their work. Our attempts to create a more equal relationship between builder, 'client' and architect are by no means the first. Both women and men have discussed and explored these possibilities in the past and are doing so now. The jobs I have described, however, were thought-provoking because they allowed a group of women designers to work with women on women-centred buildings. They all involved working with sympathetic women 'clients', not all with women builders. Projects have been funded by the state and/or a local authority, rather than directly by the 'client' group. This has made it easier to establish an egalitarian relationship between architects and 'client' group than between architects and women builders. It is our shared politics and feminist intentions that make an equal relationship possible, but this can be very easily under- mined when one group assesses the quality and value of the other group's work, and pays them. Relationships between women archi- tects and women builders are much more difficult because to some extent the architect's job always includes supervising the builder's work, and authorizing payment for work completed. The conventional relationship between architect and builder, where the builders are all men, is an uncomfortable one for most women architects. Whereas middle-class men are socialized to use the rational detachment required of their assigned role as adjudi- cator between client and builder, women's socialized role is to sym- pathize with people and to understand and be supportive to the problems of others. This may mean that women tend to give everybody concerned more thought and the job more care. Women tend to consult and ask for participation in decision-making more than men. However, the architect's role is more stressful for women since it is usually diffi- cult to please both client and builder. It is also a contradictory role. Working with women 103 Making Space Women architects are in an authoritative role, which class differ- ences reinforce, yet as women they do not normally have authority over men. Male architects and builders can overcome class differ- ences to some extent by sharing male camaraderie, but women can- not do this. Thus women architects are isolated by both sex and class. Because of this it has been particularly important for us to be able to work with women builders. The building work for Lambeth Women's Workshop, the temporary premises for Dalston Children's Centre and the shop for Balham Food and Book Co-operative were done by women builders. These projects have brought up more ques- tions than they have answered; however, I think it is worth outlin- ing the questions. Because of differences in status, class and decision-making roles, and because the contract normally used between client and builder assumes no trust between them, there is usually some degree oftension between architect and builder. Ifwomen architects work with women builders within the conventional framework this tension is in direct conflict with the expectations of working in a sis- terly way, that is, supportively and co-operatively. How do we find a framework for working together which is based on mutual trust in order to resolve these contradictions? What do we expect from skill sharing? Four of us in Matrix have learnt building skills in order to work on site. It is far easier to us to do that than it is for builders to learn design skills, because builders are trained in a more ad hoc way than architects, and the training is shorter. It is obviously not possible or desirable that everyone should be able to do everyone else's job, but it is necessary to understand and be able to relate to others' skills. Because archi- tects' skills are less visible than builders', it is even more important that architects' skills should be de-mystified and made clear and accessible. How do we do that? Because women do not have a history of being builders or archi- tects, every project is like pioneering. Women want it to be really good because they do not have mothers and grandmothers who have done it before, and who prove they will be able to do it too. This ques- tion of confidence affects day-to-day work. In many ways women expect more of each other than they do of men, and worry lest others should think they are not doing a good enough job. How do we estab- lish standards of our own, ways that suit our skills and expec- tations? 104 The constraints of money and time mean that on site there is continual pressure to keep working. Finding ways of working more equally involves making time to discuss ideas and work out prob- lems. While architects are paid enough to be able to choose to some extent how to spend their time, this is not the case for builders. There are no obvious answers to these questions. Exploring ways of working together takes place within a divided and exploita- tive building industry. We tried one way of working more closely together when two women architects worked on site with the Women's Building Co-op. The advantages of this design-and-build process are usually described functionally- it is more efficient to have designers and builders working closely together. Everyone knows more about what is going on, fewer mistakes are made of the kind that happen on conventional sites due to bad communication. These are advantages. But it is also important that the status differ- ences between designing and building work are broken down. The assumptions that go with conventional roles within the building industry are powerful. The definition ofjobs, which skills are considered necessary in the creation of buildings and how they are relatively valued and paid for - these are all issues of vital importance. We cannot expect to avoid these hierarchies, except per- haps on particular projects, but neither can we accept them. How women are involved in the building process affects the buildings we create as much as involvement in the design does. During the time we have been working together as Matrix we have continued to feel that more and more women are exploring the same ideas, wanting to learn how we can mould the physical environment around us. I have been trying to describe ideas and feelings about women and buildings which I think we are only beginning to understand clearly. It is a process of unravelling all the ways we are conditioned to think about the places around us, and then creating our own ways, our own spaces. It is a tentative, lurching process, sometimes making us feel trapped by endless trivial matters, sometimes giving us feelings of great excitement and discovery. What we have learnt is how much there is to discover, and that it is possible to make spaces that respond to women's needs. If we can become more aware of how the buildings we live and work in relate to how we live, then we can create buildings that work with women's struggle for libe- ration rather than against it. Working with women 105 8. Private kitchens, public cooking Discussions of housing often proceed from a consideration of a list of such basic human needs as clothing, food, warmth and shelter, in which housing is seen to satisfy the last need, that for shelter. How- ever housing is intimately related to another human need, that for food. The meaning and value of meals in our culture and time appear to depend not on an abstract consideration of starch and fats, proteins and vitamins, but upon where they are cooked, by whom, and for whom. The phrase 'home cooking' carries a meaning far beyond the preparation of meals in a house. It suggests security, nurturance, warmth. Delicious meals might be eaten in a restaurant, if you can afford it, but good food is eaten at home. In advertising, pictures abound of women/wives serving meals to their brightly expectant families. In this imagery it is not only sex stereotyping that is important but also the notion of service. In television commercials and on hoardings it is clear that the woman/ wife is not buying a particular product or cooking a particular dish so that she can have a good meal for herself. Her pleasure is in the rumblings of contentment from her man, and at the delighted expressions on her children's faces. Clearly the meaning of home cooking is associated with the value of a wife and mother's love. Since the passing of the Sex Discrimination Act boys may now be taught cookery. This has not had the effect of producing TV com- mercials where men's and women's roles are reversed within the family. Rather a bachelor is seen cooking the latest in convenience foods as a preliminary to the (presumed I seduction of his girlfriend. Has this particular vision of the domestic idyll always been so generally with us? Before the second world war many upper-class and upper-middle-class women had cooks. Although they had 106 responsibility for menu planning and style, it was their less fortu- nate sisters who did the work. Meanwhile many working-class women struggled with appalling housing and employment con- ditions and it was only with the greatest difficulty that they could produce hot food. Much of the housing stock lacked such basic amenities as hot water and places to store food, such as larders and cold stores. Since the second world war fitted kitchens have appeared in the houses of working-class owner-occupiers and council tenants. Modern kitchens were promoted as a way of increasing the 'house- wifely arts' and, paradoxically, of reducing the housewives' burden. The architect Jane Drew voiced this opinion in an article in Women's Illustrated when she said: 'I feel that every woman agrees that household drudgery must be banished after the war and that's why I'm concentrating on kitchens.'' However even in 1945 the value of modern kitchens in reducing housework was being questioned. An anonymous 'Housewife', in an article in a professional journal entitled 'Hopes and fears for the kit- chen: a straight talk to architects' made the point that: This super-kitchen idea wants debunking. It has come to us from America, and is presented to our eyes in ultra-smart advertisement illustrations, where there's a place for every- thing and everything in its place. The surfaces on either side of the sink have no more than a banana or two, a few small china pots, and an electric mixing bowl with a ten-pound look. And presiding over this streamlined work place is a young lady alluringly chic, with three-inch Louis heels, a perfectly sweet little apron, and a coiffure that a Hollywood star might envy. She is never doing anything more onerous than stirring a sau- cepan in the most ladylike manner.2 The anonymous housewife's fears have been confirmed by research which shows that instead of the numbers of hours spent by housewives doing housework declining since 1945, they have, if anything, increased.a Much of this housework time is spent in pre- paring meals, and clearing up after them. This is not to suggest that cooking is itselfan unpleasant activity. Many women get great plea- sure from some kinds of cookery. But having to plan, shop for, cook and wash up after a main meal every day is hard work. It is an Private kitchens. public cooking 107 Making Space assumption in the marriage contract that this work will be the responsibility of women. It could be argued that the mere provision of a kitchen does· not, by itself, force a woman to cook in it. This is obviously true. If all women were to refuse to participate in meal provision except on a reciprocal basis with men, the problem for women of having prime responsibility for domestic work would be solved. To do this would require a ,-evolution in society: not only would work within the house be equally distributed between men and women, but work outside the house as well. Does this mean, then, that the meanings of'home' and its physical container, the house, cannot be challenged until such a revolution occurs? Recent feminist history has been concerned to uncover reformist experiments that have made these challenges. Dolores Hayden has discovered a history of feminist designs for cities, dis- tricts and houses. Most of these experiments were run for and by middle-class women as purely private ventures. For this reason, this chapter will focus on what was for me, and I am sure for most of my generation, an unknown experiment which took place during the second world war. Between 1940 and 1950 restaurants or cafeterias known as British Restaurants were run by local authorities on a non-profit- making basis. The restaurants were primarily organized to meet working-class need; commercial establishments catered for the rich. British Restaurants set out to provide well-balanced, nourishing meals in places convenient for people to eat in. The second world war caused immense disruption to the totality of everyday life. Single women were mobilized and sent off to work where necessary. By June 1940 over 5 million women were in civil employment.4 Women who had children or other dependants to look after were urged to do voluntary work. About a million women were active as voluntary workers in civil defence, the WVS. and other organizations:" Family life was further disrupted by the evacuation ofchildren and expectant mothers. Millions were evacuated in 1940, only to return to their dwellings later in the war. State intervention occurred in every aspect of life. Rationing was introduced in January 1940 for ham, bacon, sugar and butter. It was to continue ever more stringently throughout the war and was not lifted until 1951. The mainspring for the inception of British Restaurants was a desire to ensure that everybody had enough to 108 eat. Concerned individuals and pressure groups before the war had produced evidence to show that mothers and children in the lowest income groups were undernourished.6 These children would have become workers and soldiers on which the war effort had to depend. Lord Woolton, who became Minister for Food, had been deeply affec- ted by this problem earlier in his life. When working as a social worker in Liverpool, his next door neighbour had quietly died of starvation.7 Community feeding became an accepted part of government policy. It was announced that: The development of Community Feeding is settled Government policy, the object ofwhich is to ensure that people who find diffi- culty for any reason in obtaining food should, as far as possible, have the opportunity of getting at least one hot meal each day. For a variety of reasons, e.g. the rise in the cost of living, the evacuation of womenfolk, the transference of male labour, and the expansion of female labour in industry, real difficulties are being experienced and it is of paramount importance in the interests of public morale and as part of the war effort that everything possible should be done by the Government to meet the problem.8 Community feeding was developed by the Ministry of Food in four ways. Regulations were introduced which obliged factories over a certain size to provide canteens. A schools dinner service was initiated. Volunteers for the Women's Voluntary Service took pies to land workers in country areas. A plan for communal feeding centres was formed. A circular was sent around to local authorities in 1940 which permitted them to set up centres. They were to be called British Res- taurants. Churchill had decided on the name, as he thought the term communal feeding centre 'odious' and remarked that it was suggestive of 'communism and the workhouse'.9 The first British Restaurant opened in September 1940. As the government offered further assistance in the form of interest free loans for capital expenditure, and a promise to make good losses, the programme gained momentum. By September 1941, a thousand British Res- taurants had been opened. The numbers rose until there were 2,000 by 1943. There was no uniformity in the location of British Restaurants. 109 Private kitchens, public cooking Makin!f Space The scale of the experiment was not large. In January 1944 when the number of restaurants was at its peak it was estimated that nearly 2 per cent of the population could have had its main meal served in a British Restaurant. British Restaurants served 'simple meals at simple prices'.10 A typical menu in the Elephant and Castle restaurant, London, reported by a Mass Observation reporter. consisted of soup, brown stew. potatoes. cabbage and marmalade pudding. The soup cost 2d. the meat and vegetables 6d and the pudding 2d. The price of a cup of tea wa,; Hd. An entire meal would have cost one shilling.11 The nwals were intended to be of a high nutritional quality and they were two-thirds of the price of the nearest comparable equivalent. l\lid-da~· nwals wen• al,;o st•n·t•d. Some restaurants also served after- noon tl•a and snacks. and a few provided suppers as well. A small proportion. particular!~· in the North-east. operated a cash-and- carr.v ,;ervice. Tht• n•,;taurant,; \H'n' ,;elf-service. and often housed in make- ,;hift building,;. The>'l' might bt• an.vthing from a school or church hall to thl• l'itt Club. Cambridge 1an t•xclusivt• gentleman's club l. :10. lnteri"r "(" Hritish Restaurant f /,ondcmt'r·s Meal Service!. 110 The Ministry of Food developed a special 'Nashcrete' concrete hut, made in a range of four types. which housed approximately 200 of the restaurants. Efforts were made to make the surroundings in all the restaur- ants as pleasant as possible. They were clean and simple. In some, wartime propaganda was displayed; others were more cheerful with murals and art exhibitions. In 1942 a professional artist was retained by the Ministry to advise on improving the interiors and kitchens in the restaurants. The British Restaurants run by the London County Council arranged a scheme for lunch-time music. 12 Private caterers were opposed to the restaurants, which they thought would steal their custom. They also resented the element of state support. Although their complaints were vociferous it is doubt- ful whether they could have dealt with the needs met by British Restaurants. Even though profit margins allowed by the large industrial caterers tended to be low, their prices were higher and their standards inferior to British Restaurants. In the only instance where a private firm put in a competing bid to open up an establish- ment instead of a British Restaurant, the Ministry of Food turned down the proposal as inadequate. 13 The protests of the caterers had two interesting effects. The first was to increase the difficulties in opening a British Restaurant. In each case the Ministry and the local authority had to consider care- fully whether private caterers met existing needs, and an assess- ment had to be made as to whether the restaurant could be self- supporting. The second effect was to discourage the use ofvoluntary labour in the restaurants, as this would have constituted unfair competition with private industry. An internal Ministry of Food memorandum in 1942 set out the complexities of the situation (and revealed the author's own prejudices): Whilst we cannot in so many words say that we do not want voluntary help in British Restaurants we should do what we can gently and tactfully to discourage it. This will not be easy because in some areas organisations like the WVS are con- stantly seeking more outlets and canteen work for some reason or other seems to appeal very much to women.14 Although women who wanted voluntary work may have wanted to work in canteens, it seems that women who required pay Private kitchens. public cookinp 111 Making Space for their services were not so keen. One ofthe difficulties reported in setting up British Restaurants was finding skilled cooks, because many had left catering for the higher wages in other industries. The prices charged by the restaurants were not kept low at the expense of the staff. By the end of the war three-quarters of British Restaur- ants were paying wages at the nationally agreed union rate for the job.ts The division of labour by sex operated in classic fashion in the hierarchical organization of British Restaurants. The Divisional Food Officer who was in overall charge of a number of restaurants was usually a man, whereas the restaurant cooks and workers were women. It is possible that some women may have been able to increase their status within the hierarchy by becoming cook- advisers. The National Council for Social Services brought together two surveys on British Restaurants. One, carried out in Birmingham, found that whilst the customers were predominantly industrial or factory workers, the restaurants served all ages and social groups. There were regional differences in the proportions of the sexes using the establishments. In London almost as many women were cus- tomers as men, but in Birmingham the proportion was reversed to two or three times more men than women. 16 The Ministry of Food also noted that whereas in Birmingham only 4 per cent of the cus- tomers were housewives, this figure rose to 20 or 30 per cent in rural areas. It is difficult to account for these differences, but the figures do suggest that the restaurants catered for a variety of need. What does seem important is that while the restaurants took the burden from women by catering for married and single men, they also seemed to serve a significant proportion of women. A remark overheard by a Mass Observation reporter, which was made by a woman in a British Restaurant in Vincent Street, London, illustrates the point: 'And take a woman at home- there's nobody coming in till evening; she can come across here and get a meal and save gas and like as not she wouldn't have a proper meal.'17 For women who were spending long periods of time of their own, and who would be unlikely to take the time and effort to cook a meal for themselves, British Restaur- ants could provide a unique service. The National Council for Social Services, who wrote a report in favour of the continuation of British Restaurants after the war, gave 112 a somewhat rosy view of the egalitarian nature of the establish- ments. More often the office worker, the director, the student and the industrial worker are to be found, not only eating at the same table, but discussing the day's news with each other when they reach the cup of tea and cigarette which is often the conclusion of their meal. 18 This idyll is amended by other evidence. For example, a Mass Obser- vation reporter records the example of the woman who, after an initial venture into a British Restaurant, refused to go into one again, because the first time some youths had sat opposite her, made a lot of noise and eaten with their hats on. So some of the genteel middle classes may have been put off by the prospect of a working- class clientele eating with them, in somewhat utilitarian surround- ings. Among the people who lived near a British Restaurant, who could find it, and who ate in it, the restaurants were reasonably popular. A Gallup poll taken in 1944 found that, of their sample, 53 per cent had eaten a meal in a British Restaurant, and 43 per cent said that they would do so again. When asked if British Restaurants should continue after the war, 60 per cent said that they should, 17 per cent said that they should not, and 23 per cent did not know.19 The comments recorded in Mass Observation's archives are mainly favourable, perhaps the most enthusiastic being: 'And they have to wait for a war to start places like these. Why can't they think ofit in peace time?'20 From 1944 onwards the number of British Restaurants de- clined. The question of whether the restaurants should continue after the war was discussed in newspaper articles, women's organiz- ations, trade union branches and political parties. Opinion was sharply divided between the political parties. The Conservative Minister for Food, J. Hunt Crowley, spoke out against continuation in 1944. He argued that after the war women would leave industry and go back to 'look after their homes'. The Labour Party was in favour of the restaurants, and their 1945 manifesto included a pledge to continue them under democratic control, an idea sup- ported by sections of the labour movement. Their concern was with the service provided to workers in industry. The Electricians' Trade Union recommended: 'This Conference, recognizing the value of Private kitchens, public cooking 113 Makinl( Space British Restaurants and Industrial Canteens and the service they have rendered to workers during the war, urges their continuance under democratic control in the post-war period.' Some women's groups were in favour of the restaurants. The basis of their support was a concern for women's health. The Con- servative Women's Reform Group argued for the continuance ofthe meals service on a voluntarv basis because it would free mothers for part of their busy day.~1 A ~ub-committee of the Women's Group on Public Welfare proposed state-run restaurants, milk and potato bars, and pubs that served hot food as well as alcohol. This recom- mendation was made in a report describing in detail the difficulties families experienced living in slum conditions. The anonymous author of the report argued her case from the needs of working-class women. Humanity must be faced as it is; it is bad psychology to expect all women to be domestic, or even if they are, to make the conti- nual sacrifice of time and energy necessary to compensate for shocking domestic conditions. The lesson of the fish and chip shop is that everyone not only wants, but needs, often impera- tively, the possibility of getting meals without having to pre- pare them.~~ Fear about the effects that a state-run meals service would have on family life often surfaced. For example the National Council for Social Services cited a survey that suggested: It would seem that if a wife does not cook her husband's main meal she loses an important function in his life; there is a fear that the extension of these restaurants would disrupt family life.~" The survey did not specify whether this anxiety was voiced by the husband or the wife! At this time, the sexual division of labour was taken so much for granted that it was inconceivable to propose that men should do their share of the cooking. At the same time wartime experience had sugge!lted that communal eating could be economically advan- tageous. However in a period of rising divorce and illegitimacy rates, family life was seen as being both fragile and precious. An Army Bureau of Current Affairs bulletin, the voice of the liberal establishment, posed the dilemma raised by British Restaurants: 114 In wartime most of us eat in community, such as in a mess, a British Restaurant, a canteen, a club. What are the merits of this procedure, and what are the drawbacks? Is it a procedure which should be encouraged after the war, or not? By eating in community we effect economies of large-scale production, we save time, we save labour in the home and in the shops. Against that we sacrifice privacy and we neglect the housewifely arts. But, above all, we lose that singular opportunity which a family gets, by eating together, of building a sort of family esprit de corps. And, after all, no matter how much we develop the wide community sense we must remember that the basic social unit is, in fact, the family. What is the answer to this complicated problem?24 Following the Labour Party's general election victory in 1945 several local authorities promoted a parliamentary bill to enable them to set up restaurants. In 1946 the Minister of Food introduced the Civic Restaurants Bill in the House of Commons. Whereas pub- lic discussions had centred on the future participation of women in the waged labour force, working-class needs and family life, the par- liamentary debate concentrated on fears that local authority res- taurants would provide unfair competition with private caterers. It was also felt that ifthe restaurants were licensed, women with chil- dren or without a male escort would feel discouraged from using them. The need for the restaurants was argued in terms of reducing the burden of housewives' work at home, rather than (as had been proposed at the restaurants' inception) to resolve the contradictions between women's responsibilities for domestic work in the home and the expansion of the female labour force. So the way was left open for the opponents of state provision to argue that housewives' needs were already catered for in the expanded housing programme. A Conservative MP, Sir William Darling, observed: If His Majesty's Government are building kitchens in which domestic cooking is to be raised to a higher standard, the need for civic restaurants, surely, disappears. Are we engaged in the encouragement of the domestic arts and in the building of kit- chens? I suggest it would be a waste of public money to engage, at the same time, in the provision of municipal restaurants. If adequate facilities are supplied to the housewife, with all these Private kitchens, public cooking 115 Making Space labour saving devices of which we have heard so much, there would be no need for this collectivised socialised soup kitchen that is being offered to them today.25 31. Intl'rior of" purposl'·hllilt London County Council cit·ic n•st(lumnt "-'it opl'nl'cl in 1949. Thl· Civic Rl•staurants Act was pas:;ed in 1947 and empowered local authoritil'S to sl•t up municipal re:;taurants provided that there was a nl•ed and that the restaurant:; could be :;elf-supporting. In 194H 770 civic n•staurants were in operation; by February 1949 the number had fallen to 678.~'; Few. if a ny. civic restaurants have sur- vivl•d. The last civic restaurant in Sheffield was sold to a private contractor in 196:l.~' Nowadays the vestiges of the wartime meals sl•rvin• reside in the school dinners service, and meals-on-wheels and lunch clubs for the elderly. British Restaurants had been an emblem of 'fair shares' in a time of national stress. In 1951 food rationing was lifted. In the economic boom which followed, it was thought that poverty had been eradicated. Poverty did not become a matter for public concern again until the mid-1960s. l!f-i The immediate post-war period was one of compromise and con- tradiction in state policies towards women. On the one hand women, the last industrial reserve of labour, were to be drawn into employ- ment; on the other, family life was to be supported and the emotional well-being of children ensured. By implication women were meant to be in the home and at work. At the same time there was a tremendous drive to increase pub- lic housing. It would seem likely that the large municipal auth- orities who were most enthusiastic about continuing civic restaurants were also those most committed to public housing. After the war there was a shortage of building materials and labour as well as an acute lack of housing. Possibly these pressing issues of accommodation took priority over what would have been seen as a risky political experiment. Furthermore male prejudice cannot be discounted. In a radio broadcast of this period men spoke disparagingly of the 'mass pro- duced belly fodder' of Army life and talked longingly of home-cooked meals.28 Hilary Land has suggested that it is no coincidence that wartime services such as nurseries and restaurants were set up when men were called away to the front and, in their absence, their wives' services were no longer required.29 A choice was posed in the post-war period between anonymous public institutions and a per- sonal service given by women to men within the sanctity of their homes. British Restaurants could be related to a whole series of pro- posals for socializing aspects of domestic work. It could be argued that such ventures are merely exercises in fuel economy. Argu- ments about economy are important because, as Dolores Hayden suggests, the isolated household uses large resources of human labour and time. It has been estimated that women with young chil- dren spend a staggering 77 hours a week doing housework.30 Even splitting this weekly amount with men would only bring it down to 36~ hours - a full working week! In an ideal future socialized and mechanized household tasks could release women and men's ener- gies for more stimulating activities. A problem remains: the 'materialist feminist' tradition which Hayden uncovered did not propose socializing housework by redis- tributing it to men. Rather the materialist feminists' plans for kit- chenless houses, co-operative housekeeping and feminist cities attempted to put housework as 'women's sphere' on a sounder foot- Private kitchens, public cooking 117 Making Space ing, independent of men, but not in opposition to them. Proposals for socializing housework after the second world war also appeared with suggestions of communal kitchens, nurseries, play rooms and sewing centres. Elizabeth Wilson points out that these proposals did not conflict with the idea of domestic work as women's work, rather they formed part of a concept of home-making as a female career.31 The danger, then, of such communal experiments is that they can represent an alternative strait-jacket for women. The sexual divison of labour has not been questioned by them. It has simply been transformed. The conditions of women's work might have changed, but not necessarily for the better. Ann Oakley found that the aspect of their role housewives enjoyed most was their auton- omy.32 This aspect might disappear if housework were done commu- nally. British Restaurants did go some way, however, towards recog- nizing the value of work women normally do unpaid. That the staff were paid union rates is important. However a state-run meals ser- vice could never be a revolutionary endeavour in itself. After all communal restaurants exist in Sweden now, and women there say that they have a long way to go in ending sexual discrimination and oppression. The most significant aspect of the British Restaurants exper- iment lay in its challenge to the responsibilities the state which ascribes to women in the marriage contract. British Restaurants took some of the responsibility from wives in servicing their hus- bands. Furthermore they were a non-coercive service. People could choose to use them or not, and if they did use them they did not lose entitlement to other benefits or services. nor were they stigmatized. British Restaurants were set up when women were needed to work outside the home, and when family life was disrupted. Since the second world war housing policy has been constructed around the premise that women do unpaid domestic work in the home, and are dependent upon a male breadwinner. However an increasing number of married women have been drawn into the waged labour force, so that now approximately half of all married women are in waged employment. Moreover the 'ideal' family of male breadwin- ner, dependent wife and children now forms a minority of house- holds. There are different types of household- single people. old age pensioners, single parents. couples in waged work - none of whom have a full-time wife to service them. 118 Cooking for one person, or two, can not only be expensive and inconvenient, but can also be a lonely affair. British Restaurants aimed to provide a homely, friendly environment. The options for single people today who want to eat outside their homes are restricted. The choice tends to lie between cafes ofthe 'greasy spoon' variety, and soulless fast-food places which, in any case, project themselves at a family market. That a need for cheap hot food cooked outside the home exists is evidenced by the growth in fast-food take-away services. The quality of the food provided by these private caterers is question- able, particularly ifregarded as a staple part ofa diet, and not a sup- plement to it. In the current recession nutritional problems are resurfacing. There are reports ofchildren with rickets, and ofunder- nourished pregnant women on supplementary benefit. The problem of poverty remains, and is, if anything, getting worse. The assumptions behind state policies towards housing, welfare benefits and health are now being criticized by feminists and socia- lists. The British Restaurants experiment combined an approach to issues of poverty and malnutrition with an implicit challenge to women's unpaid labour in the home. As such, the experiment could, to use a well-worn cliche, provide us with food for thought. Private kitchens. public cooking 119 9. House and home How does the experience of bringing up a baby change women's attitudes to their homes? Are there any particular requirements of which housing policy makers, designers and architects should be aware? What follows is a report of conversations with several women friends touching on various issues connected with life in the home. It draws on our experiences and talks about the day-to-day details of our lives with young children. These details and feelings may appear trivial, routine and unworthy of examination and they therefore become invisible and invalid. That they appear so may be a reflection of the way the world of the baby seems to shrink to a size that can be accommodated by an infant constantly facing new experiences, watched by the mother with excitement and pleasure, as it acquires recognition of people and places. The world shrinks too for the mother, forced to adapt herself to the baby's pace. However, the invalidation of the mother's experiences is part of the way society ignores the situation of women with young children - an extension of its lack of concern for the needs of women generally. The house as a type of building is particularly interesting for the richness of associations embodied in what often appear to be straightforward solutions to mundane requirements. Perhaps for this reason, talking about our homes and our feelings round the idea of'home' and 'the family' is extremely personal and can be very diffi- cult and threatening. Often we feel guilty and defensive. Sometimes we do not see any alternative to what we've got. Can we visualize a new furniture arrangement? Can we imagine a household set-up beyond our current one? Are our homes really mirrors of our inner personalities? Should we keep them like our mothers would? Because the ideas discussed here are personal and exploratory, 120 I found that it was necessary to talk to friends, and easier to have long conversations, rather than conducting a series of interviews. So I talked with friends including several architects who were trained to visualize buildings and spaces and can imagine using their homes in different ways. All of us are middle-class professional women liv- ing in converted nineteenth-century houses in central London. We are a privileged group with an unusual degree of control over our environment. Three of us are single parents. All of us work outside the home in professional jobs and therefore have relinquished sole care of our children. The group is hardly a representative sample. The aim was not to investigate a statistical norm but to spark off a different way of thinking about our homes. I am taking it as read that many women bring up children in conditions of grinding poverty and extreme hardship, with no chance to choose and control their environment. My intention is not to go over this ground but rather to recount the equally valid experiences of some women who have been able to be conscious of their changing requirements. The women quoted in this chapter are: Alexi, who has a young baby, Andre, is an architect teaching and researching in architecture and planning, and is married to Michael. They live in a three-storey terrace house. Linda, a single parent with a 3-year-old daughter, Ellie, who at the time was working part-time as an architect in a local authority. They live in a ground-floor flat. Caroline, also a single parent, with a 5-month-old son, Barney. She is a supply teacher for English as a second language, and they live in a large, communal house of 12 people, including, Sue, who has a 2-year-old son, Ossie, and was about to have her second child. She is an archaeologist and married to Mike. Val, who has a 14-year-old son, Jud, and a 6-year-old daughter, Jess. She is a modeller and makes models for films. She lives in the top three floors of a terrace house. Her marriage had broken up about two years before the conversations. Benedicte, the author, has a 3-year-old son, Kim, and a 6- month-old daughter, Kate, and works full-time as an architect in local government. They live with the father, Mike, and Ann, who looks after the children when Benedicte and Mike are out at work, in the top three floors ofa terrace house. The comments in this chapter should be seen against a cultural background of the privatization of childcare and housework where House and home 121 Making Space women almost always carry the real responsibility for young chil- dren, for even communal households are merely individual attempts to find an alternative way of life, like islands in an ocean of nuclear families. A prisoner in her own home After the birth of a baby, many women find themselves feeling iso- lated and depressed, perhaps because of the interruption in a rou- tine of going out of the house to work, exacerbated by the physical difficulties of getting about with the new-born baby. The mother is terribly bound up in the young baby, and her focus is changed from a range of relationships and experiences to a concentrated one-to-one intimacy with the baby. Being pregnant is like being old and infirm; now after the birth I feel like I'm disabled, trying to get around loaded down with baby, pram, nappy bag, change ofclothes, bottles etc. etc. There are lots ofplaces I avoid going to now I've a young child. When he was a baby there was a problem about breastfeeding and changing nappies, then I was worried that he'd throw a tantrum, and now there's the awkwardness ofhis beingjust out ofnappies but every now and then being in urgent need ofa toilet. Public transport is excellent as far as getting to work goes - a train journey and it's only 20 minutes door to door - but for other trips, well, I need the car for visiting friends as I don't have very many friends locally and without a car it would entail a struggle with British Rail, tube and bus which would have been virtually imposs- ible when Ellie was little. I park the car as close outside the flat as possible. Even women who can drive, have easy access to a car, and recognize that the car allows them to travel with the baby, feel reluctant to drive on their own. I'm terrified she'll wake up and cry and I can't stand that. There is the added dimension of psychological distance. We are not just talking about the time required to ferry babies about, nor about the problem of work and efficiency in a speedy culture, though clearly these are real problems, but about increased tensions in 122 getting to the place of work, separation from the child, and childcare arrangements. Work is a 20-minute cycle ride away. But now ifI have to take Andre with me I have to use the car and struggle with rush-hour traffic and mess about finding somewhere to park. IfI'm leaving him behind I'm also very conscious of how long it takes to get to work as I'm con- stantly aware that 5 hours' childcare by someone else equals only 3~ hours of work by me at the most. So psychologically work is actually a lot further away now. The design of a house can positively discourage people from attempting to go out. The ideal arrangement is a front door at pave- ment level with a large and warm hall where a pram, and later a tri- cycle, can be kept. Our hall is particularly narrow, so I knew a normal pram was out of the question and I bought one ofthose pram-buggies, and when Kim was very tiny he spent most evenings with us in the kitchen while we cooked and ate and we'd have the pram set up and take it in turns rocking it with one foot so we'd have some peace and quiet while we ate. When I wanted to go out I would have to 1) take the bouncing chair down to the hall, 2) come upstairs to the kitchen (two flights) and dress Kim in his outdoor clothes and take him down and strap him in the chair, 3) go upstairs and dismantle the pram and take the buggy wheels down to the hall, 4) go upstairs and carry the carry-cot and blankets down to the hall (very difficult to manoeuvre this quite heavy object down the narrow stairs), 5) take the buggy wheels down the steep front steps to the pavement and set them up, 6) take the carry-cot down to the pavement and fix it to the wheels, shouting through the open front door to Kim so he didn't feel abandoned, 7) rush in and get Kim (hoping no one was wheeling the pram away) and carry him down the front steps and put him in the pram and at last set out on our expedition. What kind of house do I want? It is a truism to say that people have brought up children in all sorts of houses, but how has the use of the spaces altered as people's life- styles have undergone the violent changes involved in having chil- dren? How have people, with apparent ease, adapted their approach and their routines to allow for the quirks of their homes? House and home 123 Making Space I live in a garden flat in what looks like a two-storey house; in fact there are two flats, one above the other. I have changed the use ofthe rooms several times since Ellie was born. For six months she slept in my bedroom, then I moved her into my dressing room and put my clothes in what had been the junk room. Then, after she was one year old, we did a complete turn around and my bedroom, which looks onto the back garden, became the living room and the old living room at the front of the house became my bedroom with the room next to it becoming officially Ellie's room. The idea is that that's large enough to be a playroom too and I switched my bedroom so that I could be sure ofhearing her in the night. The access to the back garden is through the kitchen unfortunately, because it's all too narrow for her to rush in and out with toys.l'd like to make the living room and dining room one space with a door to the garden from it. The flat is almost on the street. There are three steepish steps to the pavement which was a bit ofa struggle with the pram. Also I stored the pram under the stairs and always fell over it; now Ellie's in a buggy and that's OK. Ellie's outdoor clothes are put away in the cup- board half-way down the corridor, so although the hall is long and narrow it's not impossible. But except for switching the use ofthe rooms around I haven't had to make any major changes, and the flat has worked really well. We do have central heating and as Ellie was born during a very cold spring I kept the heating on very high and constantly blasting away for the first three or four weeks. Also I bought a dimmer switch so I could turn the light down low in the bedroom when she was asleep, but that's all the adaptations I made. Our house is a three-storey terrace house which opens at the front straight onto the street and goes straight through to the garden at the back. We haven't made any alterations to the house since having Andre, rather we've adapted existing arrangements in a very small way. For instance in the bedroom I've adjusted my bedside light to reflect on the wall and give a soft diffused light which is very calm and restful for feeding fthough not so good for reading!). We now have the radia- tor on in the bedroom so that I can feed at night naked and it's also warm enough to change him in a relaxed way. I bought a small elec- tric blow heater so I can plug it in in any room we want to be in and I can leave him to kick without his nappy. 124 The kitchen used to be the centre ofthe house but it isn't anymore, partly because as Andre doesn't eat solids yet he doesn't eat in there and as it's a cool room he can't be left to kick. In fact it's the bathroom, which contains the washing machine and tumble dryer, which feels like the centre ofthe house now. For Linda and Alexi then, the arrival of their babies did not cause any outbreak of complaints against their homes; if anything, the reverse. I actually appreciate this flat more now with Ellie. It's very convenient being on one level and the fact that we're so near the shops and don't have to cross any major roads to get to them is excellent. It is worth noting that Linda's flat has the extra flexibility that decent-sized rooms on one level provide. For instance she has four rooms, any one of which could be used as a living room. Alexi's house on the other hand has the more traditional arrangement of living rooms on the ground opening onto the garden with bedrooms upstairs. In the non-traditional, communal house too there were no direct complaints about the house plan: We live in a communal household- basically it's two adjacent terrace houses made into one large one. There's now a total of12 rooms with two bathrooms, three WCs and the communal kitchen and 'Big Room' where we sit and also eat. Mike and I share two rooms which open into each other and Ossie has a room upstairs. The idea in this house is that each person, child or adult, has their own room though a couple might share both rooms or have a separate room each. There are difficulties about having children in a shared house; for example, there's no peaceful teatime because I feel I have to quickly clear up the mess before the others get back from work. Also because the house is big and Ossie's room is upstairs from ours, we have to use a baby alarm, but now Caroline's had Barney the two alarms seem to cut each other out. · This household had been through some major policy changes in the previous year. There's no longer any income sharing. Everyone has to contribute at the same fixed rate. Also the house has given up shared childcare so House and home 125 Making Space now it's the total responsibility ofthe parent or parents. So although it's a wonderful place to have a baby, being clean, warm, spacious and with a garden,/ feel in a way very much on my own even though Sue's been a fantastic help both during pregnancy and at the birth. In fact, it emerged that slight alterations in the form of the plan, to handle the boundary between public and private space more subtly, would have helped the two mothers significantly: In addition to the Big Room, we're making the small room down- stairs into a communal but child-free and quiet room and I think this will help because at the moment it's impossible to feel very relaxed about having Barney or even his little bouncing chair out in the even- ing. And when I went into mixed feeding because my milk supply was running low,[ had to go through the Big Room to the kitchen to heat the bottle up and I felt everyone was watching me and witnessing my inadequancy. For Val, having children marked a drastic change in her life for, unlike the rest of us, she and Julian found they had to move after they had their first child. Eventually they bought a terraced house and spent the next 12 years adapting it to meet their changing needs. After a year with the baby in a cockroach and mouse infested base- ment. we bought this house. There were some sitting tenants and we had the ground floor with a big room at the front and a largish bed- room at the back and a big extension at the rear with a small sitting room and kitchen. The house was neat and in good condition but awkwardly planned. We shared a bathroom with upstairs. After a year we altered the plan. We made an opening between the front sitting room and the back room which became the kitchen/din- ing room with a door onto the garden. We put in a small bathroom in the back extension and the rest of it was our bedroom with a space behind the cupboard for Jud. It was t•er:v compact, and good for hav- ing lots of people in for meetings. It worked t•er:v well while we just had Jud but when he was 5 or 6 it became really overcrowded. It didn't bother me having him sleep in our bedroom, but he needed his own room and missed out because he didn't get that till he was B. When Jess was born we shifted around. The elderly tenants couldn't manage the stairs well any more. so they moved down to the ground floor but didn't want the back extension so that room is now 126 rented out to someone else and he has use of the garden and comes upstairs and shares the kitchen and bath. We put in a spiral staircase from upstairs to the garden but don't use it much. When we moved upstairs the relationship between Julian and me had become hairy and decisions about the plans for the house were important for how we were going to live. We needed a plan we could all live in together, but it had to be adaptable in case I was to be on my own with the kids and, as I would have to work, I would need a studio in the house; so I reckoned we needed a kitchen and a living room and then a room for each ofus. A t this stage I wanted space and privacy and was totally opposed to the open plan. My room was the studio in the back extension and our bedroom at the top was nominally Julian's room. But we had a big fight over dividing one of the big rooms so that the children had a room each. My own experience has been that the way various rooms relate to each other is critical, that the ideal arrangement changes with the advent of the baby, as it grows up, and that it continues to change as the number ofchildren alters. We had lived in this house quite a long time, five years. before having Kim. When we moved in we were literally camping, carrying water up the stairs, boiling kettles and scrounging baths offfriends. I used to be very excited about the house and all the work we were doing con- verting it. I liked learning how to lay bricks and what it felt like phy- sically to break up a 3-inch concrete slab in the backyard. I found it amazing that we could change the shape and the feel of the rooms with our own hands. Also we were very involved outside the house with work, trade union meetings, politics. If we were at home we were either working, cooking big meals for friends or sleeping. I have never been house- proud either in the sense ofworking very hard to sustain an image of myselfthrough my home nor ofbeing concerned about what the house represented in terms ofinvestment, comfort, stability. When we were expecting Kim people shook their heads and said how difficult it would be. The piles ofcrockery on open shelves were predicted for early smashing. The stairs were pronounced a potential danger. The lack of central heating would lead to miserable night feeds and bouts ofcoughs and colds. And although we- and the chil- dren- are surviving (and it gives me quite a lot ofpleasure to know House and home 127 Making Space we can get byJI think my attitude to the house has changed a lot since having children. This is partly a result of spending more time at home and therefore being forced to be aware of discomforts and inconveniences. But it is also because my needs have changed, both in terms ofsimple functional requirements (/s there room for the baby's cot plus extra furniture? Can I clean the floor adequately after the baby has thrown up? Where can I bathe the new-born?) and also in terms ofsome newly conscious emotional desires. Our maisonette is at the top ofa narrow Victorian terrace house. There are only two rooms on each floor with a small back extension which contains the utility room and spare bathroom on the halfland- ings. We have five rooms, all thought ofas quite separate. We decided to make all the rooms feel very private so when we rebuilt the stair- case we made a solid wall up the middle instead ofbanisters which does make each landing feel more cut off Also for privacy, because we tended to share our place with someone and because we often had friends coming to stay for quite long periods, we decided to separate our bedroom from the spare bedroom rather than having the tra- ditional grouping of all the bedrooms, so that we could all listen to music or make love or quarrel in our rooms without feeling too con- scious ofdisturbing someone else, so the spare room and our bedroom are separated by an intermediate floor containing the study. But this arrangement is not so good when there are young children around. As there are no adjacent bedrooms the study had to become the nursery, and as it is a steep flight ofstairs from our bedroom, I was terrified I wouldn't hear Kim if he cried, so, even armed with a baby alarm, it took me more than four months before I dared move Kim out ofour bedroom. And as he was a light sleeper, this created a lot oftension. I was concerned to be in the room when Kim woke (nervous first- time mother! so I spent a lot oftime sitting on the bedroom floor try- ing to work or attempting to carry on a quiet phone conversation. As I only felt happy at leaving him when he was well and truly asleep I think I often picked him up to take him downstairs with me when he was probably just on the verge of falling asleep. I think now if we'd had rooms which opened into each other more so that I could have been in the same space as Kim but not too near him. he might have had the amount ofsleep he needed and I might have had more time to myself Interestingly enough, with Kate I had a different sort ofdifficulty. 128 She is an incredibly relaxed baby and could go to sleep anywhere. We started off with a moses basket in the kitchen but Kim and his friend Joseph got too excited standing on chairs and trying to tip over the basket to get a better view. So, I sort ofretreated upstairs with her and had some lovely sunny November days up there while Kim felt more and more left out. I think if there were more spaces, more easily linked together, it would be possible for Kim to be not too close to Kate without actually rejecting her by going into another room and shutting the door. (This is made worse by the fact that, for fire escape reasons, all our doors have to be self-closing.) And if we had more bedrooms closer together we'd have been able to put Kate in her own room and then Kim prob- ably wouldn't have gone through his recent phase ofrefusing to go to bed in his room and insisting on sleeping with us. The other interesting point is our kitchen, which consists of work- tops made ofdoors on bricks and with open shelving- it's been tem- porary for years and in fact has gone through three different metamorphoses. It is certainly not child-proof. What is fascinating is that Kim and Joseph have always played with the crockery as well as the pots and pans and as a result have learnt how to handle things carefully. The flights of steep stairs did rather shock one of the domiciliary midwives and I think having to get me to go down three flights of stairs to answer the doorbell put offsome neighbours from dropping in. However I do feel the exercise was rather a good thing as after both labours I felt fine and quite energetic and, once I'd got confident about holding Kim, negotiating the stairs didn't seem dangerous any more. Once Kim started to crawl though, another danger appeared. We contemplated getting stair gates (five would have been needed) and decided it would actually be safer to teach him to crawl up and down himself. It was a very slow and laborious process and it was tempting most ofthe time to just pick him up and carry him but it was amazing how early- 9 months- he learnt to cope. I am quite sure that the changes in preferred room relation- ships continue until the children are grown up and leave home. Should we be pressing then for dwellings to be designed to fit the needs of a family's life at a particular moment, with easy oppor- tunity to move house? Or do we look for designs for homes which allow enough elbow-room for some degree of flexibility? What are the additional costs of this and who pays? House and home 129 Makilllf Space Fridges. tr .zers and other magic Babies seem to bring with them the need for a battery of equipment, all of which requires storage space and a suitable place to use it. Toys aside, there are cloths and piles of nappies, changing mats, cots, plastic baths, bottles and sterilizing tanks (even breast-fed babies might want a suck ofwaterl and the dustbin seems to have to be twice as big as before. Shops are full of specialized bits of equip- ment, all requiring outlays of money. But many prospective parents manage to avoid purchasing huge quantities of things, and not just for reasons ofeconomy. I suppose I was superstitious so I didn't buy any ofthe layette. I was given some hand-me-downs by friends and the family baby cot and plastic bath and we went offand bought some terry nappies in a sale. I felt quite adamant that I wouldn't buy all these plastic toys but took great pleasure in rigging up bits of mobiles from coloured paper, corks and things and producing pots and wooden spoons instead of toy drums. Likewise you don't really need a huge sterilizing tank- a large plastic yoghurt carton and lid will do for a small bottle. As far as normal household electrical equipment goes there were no great changes in attitude: The fridge was useful a.~ it always has been but I discovered the freezer was really good for storing expressed milk and later for ice- cube sized lumps ofpureed food when solids were started. Also as I'm too tired to do much cooking in the evenings,/ take a cooked dish out ofthe freezer and heat it up. But the washing machine was generally considered essential. I can't imapint• hmt• people manage without a washing machine if tlreyh· put a hahy. Well./ know you can because I've got a friend who dtdn 't lrm·e a machine and washed all her first baby's clothes by hand and .~Ire .~aid illt'as OK because you only had to soak and rinse out six nappic.~ a day. Su I pue.~s she stuck to a four-hour interval between clranpinp nappies but I know I can get through 12 a day sometimes. Anyu•ay. it's not just the nappies- there are all the clothes which have been sicked on or leaked on and the bedding and my clothes as well. Both the washing machine and tumble dryer are invaluable. They were really liberating even before having kids and more so after. It's t•ery good to be able to rely on the clothes being washed, and dry, 130 ready for re-use, regardless of the vagaries of the weather, and it's essential ifthere's a run on nappies. Also it saves a lot ofsheer physi- cal work. On a larger scale, the daily routine of filling nappy buckets and putting nappies in the washing machine meant that having the bathroom in a central place in the house and near the washing machine simplified the job. And bathrooms that were spacious and warm were much appreciated. The top bathroom is very good as it's got a heater with a wide top over it and I can put him on it on a double towel and he can kick about while I get dressed because I know he won't fall off If there were enough room in the bathroom for a changing mat and the nappy bucket, I could sluice the nappy in the loo and put it straight into the sterilizing solution and then wash my hands instead oftrailing about from the bedroom to the loo and back to the bucket with dripping nappies and dirty bums and hands. Chained to the sink: attitudes to housework Among the people I spoke to there was great variation in arrange- ments for coping with the housework. What difference does a young child make besides creating more chores to be done in less time by a rather tired parent? The key thing to emerge was a feeling of reduced control over one's own time (and therefore the need to find simpler and quicker ways of achieving ends) and over one's environment (and hence a tendency to become more anxious about untidiness). The shopping I do in one go, usually on Friday night or Saturday morning at Sainsbury's with Ellie and in the car. Shopping used to be a strain in case Ellie had a tantrum in the shop. When Ellie was tiny I used the sling; once she could sit up I put her in the front ofthe trolley. At Putney there's a car-park attached and you can take the trolley to the car- this really determines where I shop now. But shop- ping has become a chore. I used to do house maintenance and decorating myself but since Ellie I've paid people to come and do some decorating. Short jobs such as laying lino or putting up light fittings I can still do myself in the evenings or when Ellie's at Jeanne's. I used to like DIY and regret I can't do more ofit now. House and home 131 Making Space I do all the cooking, mainly on Saturdays and Sundays. I enjoy cooking and would really like more time in the euenings to do it. I miss it. But the washing up tends to pile up. These days I do pretty basic English food and lots of spaghetti. The emphasis now is on speed and simplicity. Sometimes I do a more complicated meal and get Ellie inuolued- which ofcourse takes longer! We use the dining table and that gets filthy and the carpet gets couered. One of us goes on Saturday and buys crates of uegetables and fruit from the cash and carry. Then we do a bulk cook-in and freeze it all. There's a cool store at the back ofthe kitchen to keep the fresh fruit in. I think ironing is a waste oftime but I don't mind laundry, cleaning and shopping. In fact, I'ue discouered I quite enjoy the local shops and exploring my neighbourhood and also now with Andre I'ue a tend- ency to use the odd free moments for housework and feel pleased because I can achieue something in a short time. I'm bad at housework and hate it but ifanything I hate other people's mess more. Probably it's a question ofnot being in control ofit. It's the difference between calm and panic- it's a real physical thing but only in regard to my own house- I don't care in other people's houses. As I get older I manage to keep one room reasonable and I try to keep it as empty as possible. Central heating is a boon and also fitted carpets which are warm, quiet, easy to clean and a unifying thing. With Kim's arriual I started to worry about the dust which would be bad for his lungs. I suppose I did get more concerned with cleanli- ness especially when he started on solids and I began for the first time to be worried about the make-shift nature ofour kitchen and the diffi- culty of cleaning it properly. We had a kind of matting on the floor and when Kim started feeding himselfand dropping bits offood on the matting, it was impossible. I'm now uery keen to build the proper kitchen with cupboards with doors and lots ofeasy clean surfaces. The other aspect is my attitude to mess and untidiness as opposed to dirt. I remember when Kim was just a couple of weeks old Mike came back from work one euening to be greeted by a barrage offury because the house was a mess, the dishes hadn't been done the night before, the nappies hadn't been washed and the place was in chaos. He was quite surprised. We always had liued in chaos so what was new? I realized then that what was new was that I no longer had com- 132 plete control ofmy time: with a very new baby (and a first one at that) I felt I had to be available whenever needed so that I couldn't just put aside two hours to blitz the mess when it got more than I could bear and I realized then that what was upsetting me was not the mess but my lack ofcontrol over mY time. Castles in the air My ideal would be to live in the country and have a garden ifmy kids were still small and I was living on my own with them. But I'm happy with what I've got now because to tell the truth I can't envisage an alternative. I don't believe in Ideals. I would like to be very centrally located in London and lack ofmoney would certainly prevent the achievement ofthe location ifnot the rest! The situation would be in an urban but green area with mature trees around, preferably close to a square or park. Also very close to shops and the tube with car-parking not too difficult. I'd like a front garden and a really large back garden not too over- looked. I should like a ground floor flat - I like single-level living especially with a child. It should have a very large living room with a high ceiling and a dining/kitchen although ifit's really huge enough I'd like a single living/dining/kitchen space with direct access to the garden. Then there'd be a good sized bedroom for me and the same for Ellie plus a study and a spare bedroom. Lots ofbuilt in storage. And central heating is essential. I think with young kids it's good to have one really large room with a floor that can be mopped and cleaned, with space for them to run up and-down or ride their tricycles or little cars, where they can play with water, paints or play dough and leave out some of their toys. Also the traditional disposition of bedrooms makes sense with your children. However when they get older and more independent, the ability for the parents to have some privacy from the kids and vice versa is important. Though I'd never previously missed having a garden, I now feel it's very useful with young children- space for running, shouting, bicy- cles; being able to wheel tiny babies outside to sleep in the fresh air; and ofcourse the introduction to bugs, plants and flowers. · House and home 133 Making Space Does this suggest that the ideal is a suburban semi-detached house with the happy nuclear family getting on with its own affairs? These middle-class professional women living in London are natur- ally aware of lack of green space, but implicit in the way each of us had chosen to organize our lives and our childcare was a need to step outside the traditional pattern of mother at home with children while father goes out to work - a tradition now no longer the norm. All of us are aware of isolation and loneliness and how they are affected by arrangement of space within a house and to the location of the house itself: My ideal is next door houses. with neighbours who are friends, with kids, and through doors in the living rooms and a shared garden. And I would like my parents and sisters to be at walking distance, or even a short driving distance away. I think with young children it's almost impossible not to feel immobi- lized and isolated in the home. Fortunately a few friends live near enough so that I could ask them to pop in for a cup oftea or a very simple supper- I kept thinking how nice it'd be to have a really huge house ..vith lots offriends. In fact, though, I think everyone needs privacy too and especially now I have young children I wouldn't like to live in a totally commu- nal house. I need the opportunity and the space to be private both with the kids and with Mike. So my ideal would be a grouping of fairly private houses and flats ofdifferent sizes I for people with and without children! with several communal facilities: a common kitchen and dining room, a library. possibly some studies and studios, a nursery. a laundry- where the communal kitchen and nursery would each be run professionally. The whole thing would be quite big, say about 30 adults. The problem is the whole situation would require a lot ofsur- plus money first to finance the capital cost of building the individual homes plus the communal bits and then to finance the running ofthe communal serr•ices. Postscript Two parallel strands emerged. Firstly, there are real factors in the size and relationship of room~:; in a dwelling that can make life with a young child more or less relaxed, more or less easy, at the emotion- ally taxing period when a new mother might be trying to convince 134 herself that she is adequate. Secondly, these physical constraints are overridden by less tangible but more fundamental issues. I felt upset after hearing about your really pleasant Saturday shop- ping expeditions en famille and I realized that what upset me is not that I can't shop in the same way because of managing with a young child on my own, but that I am on my own and don't have someone to go shopping with. I have a strange disembodied feeling being on maternity leave as if I've no business round here. I bump into neighbours in the street and that's nice but it's a bit artificial as I know I'll soon be back at work and away from this neighbourhood for a whole day. This separation between home and work goes much deeper than the physical distance between the two domains: I'm pleased to be back at work. I miss the children and I get exhausted but I'm glad to be doing my own thing again. And I mean just that: doing my own thing, being myself This society does not properly cater for the needs of women with small children. The lack of provision for babies and toddlers in shop- ping centres, restaurants, art galleries, theatres and pubs shows the physical aspect of this problem. The lack of tolerance of babies and toddlers in these public places is another dimension of the problem, and this other dimension caused this group of women to discover dif- ficulties and emotions within us, attitudes that surprised us. It may be that the nuclear family is the most 'economical' way for capitalist society to reproduce itself. And in a privatized society the suburban semi is probably the most 'efficient' solution for hous- ing the nuclear family, for its plan, the relationship to the garden and access by car, and for a reasonable feeling of spaciousness. But leaving aside the costs of this form of housing, it does not fulfil the needs of the woman - the mother, lonely and hampered in getting about - to develop her own interests. Modern Britain pays lip ser- vice to the importance of mothering but does not cherish its mothers. It is only when the activities of bringing up children and run- ning the home become socialized that the fundamental problems of loneliness and alienation, which often accompany responsibility for young children, will begin to be overcome. Although realignment of rooms in a house might improve life for mothers with young chil- House and home 135 Making Space dren, it is often hard to disentangle the problem of use of space in a house from that of attitudes of the household towards children. These attitudes may need to be reassessed. Similarly, the attitude of one family to another may need to be radically changed. In the meantime designers, administrators and builders can merely ameli- orate many of the physical difficulties by the thoughtful and sensi- tive production of safe houses. 136 Notes and references 1. Introduction 1. A survey carried out in 1978 showed that 5.2 per cent of architects in the United Kingdom were women. See Michael P. Fogarty, Isobel Alien and Patricia Waiters, Women in Top Jobs 1968-1979, London: Heinemann Edu- cational Books 1981, p.223. 2. Office of Population Censuses and Surveys, General Household Survey 1980, London: HMSO 1982. 3. A good summary of these debates is given by Eva Kaluzynska in Femi- nist Review, no. 6, 1980, pp.27-54. 4. MoralismandtheModelHome:DomesticArchitectureandCulturalCon- flict in Chicago 1873-1913, Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1980. 5. Signs, supplement 5, no. 3, Chicago: Spring 1981. H. Austerberry and S. Watson, Women on the Margins, London: City University 1983. Also see generally: Dolores Hayden, The Grand Domestic Revolution: A History of Feminist Designs for American Homes, Neighbourhoods and Cities, Cam- bridge, Massachusetts and London: MIT Press 1981; Leonore Davidoff, 'The separation ofhome and work?' inS. Burman (ed.l, Fit Work for Women, Lon- don: Croom Helm 1979; and Sue Francis and Frances Bradshaw, 'A woman's place', Slate, no. 13, July 1979. 2. Women, architects and feminism 1. Michael P. Fogarty, Isobel Alien and Patricia Waiters, Women in Top Jobs 1968-1979, London: Heinemann Educational Books 1981, p.223. 2. Mike Koudra, 'Architects' earnings in 1976: how do you compare'?'. Architects' Journal, vol.165, 6 April1977, pp.635-6; and Central Statistical Office, Social Trends No. 11, London: HMSO 1981, table 6.4, p.87. 3. Frank Jenkins, Architect and Patron, London: Oxford University Press 1961, p.87. 137 Making Space 4. The research is reported fully in Jane Darke, The Design ofPublic Hous- ing: Architects' Intentions and Users' Reactions, PhD dissertation, Univer- sity of Sheffield 1983. Residents of the schemes were also interviewed. The interviews took place in 1975 and 1976. 5. Rhona and Robert Rapoport, Dual Career Families, Harmondsworth: Penguin 1971. 8. Architectural Design, vol. XLV no.8, August 1975. 7. Margherita Rendel, 'Ideological measures and the subjugation of women', International Journal of Political Education, vo1.5, 1982, pp.105--20. 8. Susana Torre led. I, Women in American Architecture, New York: Whit- ney Library of Design 1977. 9. RIBA Journal, vol.VI, 189~99, pp.77-8. 10. Sheila Rowbotham, Hidden from History, 3rd edition, London: Pluto Press 1977. 11. Information from file on Elizabeth Scott in RIBA Library, Reports on the Stratford competition in RIBA Journal, vol.XXXV, 14 January 1928, p.145; The Builder, vol.CXXXIV, 6 January 1928, p.7; The Times, 6 Janu- ary 1928, p.8. 12. The main source of information on Jane Drew is an unpublished talk she gave during the Schools of Architecture Council Festival at Hull School of Architecture in 1980. The RIBA Library card index refers to several articlesaboutbuildingsdesignedbyDrew. · 13. Report on the Social Insurance and Allied Services, IBeveridge Reportl, London: HMSO 1942, p.49. 14. Michael Fogarty and others, op.cit. 15. Ibid. p.226. 18. Ibid. p.229. 17. Ibid. pp.236-9. 18. For an account of one co-operative see Liz Jones, 'Co-operative archi- tects', Architects' Journal, vo1.177, 16 February 1982, pp.42-5. 3. Homes fit for heroines: housing in the twenties I. North West Labour History Society, Women and the Labour Movement, bullt•lin 7. published in association with Manchester Women's History Group. Manchester: Manchester Free Press 1981; J. Liddington and J. Nor- rill, Om• Ha11d Tit!d Behind Us, London: Virago 1978; C. Rowan, 'Women in the h&bour party 1906-1920', Feminist Review, no.12, 1982, pp.74--91. 2. Women'!! Housing Sub-Committee, Ministry of Reconstruction, Interim Report, cmd 9166. London: HMSO 1918; Women's Housing Sub-Committee, Ministry of Reconstruction, Final Report, cmd 9232, London: HMSO 1919. 3. M. Swenarton, Homes Fit for Heroes: The Politics and Architecture of 138 Early State Housing in Britain, London: Heinemann Educational Books 1981. 4. Margaret I. Cole (ed.), Beatrice Webb's Diaries 1912-24, London: Long- man Green 1952, p.136. 5. Women's Co-operative Guild, Maternity: Letters from Working Women, London: G. Bell 1915, republished Virago 1978; M. Pember-Reeves, Round About a Pound a Week, London: G. Bell 1913, republished Virago 1979; Women's Labour League, The Working Women's House: Women's Chief Task is to Make A Home, London: Women's Labour League 1918. 6. Public Records Office (PRO), RECO 11470 and RECO 11474. 7. Women's Labour League, op. cit. 8. J. Burnett, A Social History of Housing 1815-1970, Newton Abbott: David and Charles 1978. 9. Local Government Board, Report ofthe Housing (Building Construction) Committee, (Tudor Waiters Report) cmd 9191, 1918. 10. PRO, RECO 11631. 11. PRO, RECO 11624, The Local Government Board Observations on The Interim Report ofthe Women's Sub-Committee, 27 August 1918. 12. PRO, RECO 11634, quoted in Women's Housing Sub-Committee Points for Discussion at Meetings. 13. Women's Housing Sub-Committee, Final Report, op.cit. 14. PRO, RECO 11631. 4. Women and public space 1. Linda McDowell, 'City and home: urban housing and the sexual division of space', in Mary Evans and Clare Ungerson (eds), Sexual Divisions: Pat- terns and Processes, London and New York: Tavistock Publications 1983, pp.142-3. 2. Sue Francis, New Woman New Space: Towards a Feminist Critique of Building Design, unpublished MA thesis, Department of General Studies, Royal College of Art May 1980. 3. Andrew Friend and Andy Metcalf, Slump City: The Politics of Mass Unemployment, London: Pluto Press 1981, p.57. Friend and Metcalf also show that the decentralization of workplaces was partly generated by employers' desires to locate near sources of female labour who could not otherwise 'reach' places of paid employment, pp.107-8. 4. Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique, London: Penguin 1963. 5. The authors continue: 'For the housewife (the home) is her place of work but she does not go elsewhere for leisure. So in her life there is no rigid work/leisure distinction either in physical location or in time'; Jean Gar- diner, Susan Himmelweit and Maureen Mackintosh, 'Women's domestic labour' (1976) in Ellen Malos (ed.), The Politics ofHousework, London and New York: Allison & Busby 1980, pp.205-6. Notes and references 139 Making Space 6. Figures from: Social and Community Planning Research together with Milton Keynes Development Corporation, Four Years On: Milton Keynes Household Survey 1973, Milton Keynes Development Corporation, March 1974, p.48. 7. Linda McDowell, op.cit. p.150. 8. Greater London Council Department of Architecture and Civic Design, An Introduction to Housing Layout: a GLC study, London and New York: Architectural Press 1978. 9. Margery Spring Rice, Working Class Wives <1939), London: Virago 1981. 10. Leonore DavidofT, Jean L'Esperance and Howard Newby, 'Landscape with figures: home and community in English society', in Juliet Mitchell and Ann Oakley (edsl, The Rights and Wrongs ofWomen, Harmondsworth; Penguin 1976, pp.145-6. 11. Alison Ravetz, Model Estate, London: Croom Helm 1974. 12. The monotony of many early council housing schemes was caused partly by the way the exterior environment, up to the 1950s, was often only considered to the extent that it improved the interiors of home. The improvement in housing standards since the earliest legislation in the 1880s has focused particularly on the insides of houses - on reduced over- crowding, on the separation of relatives from non-relatives, on a shift to total servicing and consumption within individual family units, whether it be non-shared bathrooms and toilets to washing machines and leisure facili- ties such as television and video with the· associated privatization of the family and an emphasis on the comfort of interior spaces. The first housing legislation concerned itself with providing better ventilation and daylight- ing to the interiors of housing by regulating the widths of streets and the open spaces between them. Whilst by the turn of the century an interest in a 'rural' setting was already developing, low density, sunlight and ventilation were to remain a priority - always using the immediate surroundings to improve the quality ofthe environment within the home itself. 13. Thanks to Bill Hillier. Julienne Hanson and John Peponis at the Unit for Architectural Studies, Bartlett School of Architecture, University Col- lege, London, for help, advice and many many arguments on housing lay- out. See, for instance, on the architectural concept of defensible space: Bill Hillier, 'In defence of space', RIBA Journal, vo1.80, no.8, August 1973. 14. Cynthia Cockburn, Brothers: Male Dominance and Technological Chanl(e, London: Pluto Press 1983, pp.184-90. 15. Carol and Barry Smart, Women, Sexuality and Social Control, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul 1978. 5. H o u • designs and women's roles 1. Robert Kerr, The Gentleman's House, London: Murray 1871, reprinted New York: Johnson 1972, p.67. 140 2. Ibid. p.143. 3. John Burnett, The Social History of Housing, 1815-1970, Newton Abbott: David and Charles, p.270. 4. Raphael Samuel, New Socialist, May-June 1983, p.29. 5. Sir Charles Harold Bellman, The Building Society Movement, London: Methuen 1927. ' 6. Ministry of Health, Design ofDwellings, London: HMSO, p.44. 7. The Builder, 15 September 1944. 8. Ministry of Housing and Local Government, Homes for Today and Tomorrow, <Parker-Morris Report), London: HMSO 1961, para.33. 6. Housing the modem family 1. DOE, Housing the Family, Lancaster: MTP Construction 1974. 2. Ministry of Housing and Local Government, Homes for Today and Tomorrow, (Parker-Morris Report), London: HMSO 1961. 3. DOE, Space in the Home, Design Bulletin No.6, Metric Edition, London: HMSO 1963, (5th impression 1975). 4. Housing the Family, op.cit. abstract. 5. Ibid. 6. Ann Oakley, Housewife, Harmondsworth: Penguin 1977. 7. Housing the Family, op.cit. p.54. 8. Ibid. p.55. 8. Private kitchens. public cooking 1. Jane Drew, 'The kitchen of the future, Women's Illustrated, 5 February 1944. 2. Anon., 'Hopes and fears for the kitchen', The Buildei·, 2 February 1945. 3. Ann Oakley, Housewife, Harmondsworth: Penguin 1976, p.7. 4. Raynes Minns, Bombers and Mash, London: Virago 1980. A woman's chronology of the war. 5. Elizabeth Wilson, Women and the Welfare State, London: Tavistock 1977, p.134. 6. Jane Lewis, The Politics of Motherhood, London: Croom Helm 1980, pp.181-4. 7. Angus Calder, The People's War, London: Jonathan Cape 1969, p.384. 8. R.J. Hammond, Food, vol.2, London: HMSO and Longman Green 1956. 9. Ibid. p.384, quoted in footnote. 10. Ministry of Food, How Britain Was Fed in War Time, London: HMSO 1946. 11. Mass Observation archive, unsorted food catalogue. 12. Ibid. Notes and references 141 Making Space 13. R.J. Hammond, op.cit. p.397. 14. Public Records Office <PRO! MAF 99 1743, Memorandum from Har- wood to Chrimes, May 1942. 15. R.J. Hammond, op.cit. p.398. 16. National Council for Social Services <NCSS), British Restaurants: An Enquiry Made by the National Council for Social Services, Oxford Univer- sity Press 1946, p.27. 17. Mass Observation archive, op.cit. 18. NCSS, op.cit. p.35. 19. New Chronicle, 5 January 1944. 20. MassObservationarchive,op.cit. 21. Conservative Women's Reform Group, When Peace Comes, London: Staples and Staples 1944. 22. Anon., Our Towns: A Close Up, London: Oxford University Press 1943. 23. NCSS, op.cit. p.19. 24. W.E. Williams, 'When the lights go on' in Army Bureau of Current Affairs, Current Affairs, no.48, 31 July 1943, p.14. 25. House of Commons, Parliamentary Debates, vol.43, c.1987, 1946-7. 26. R.J. Hammond, op.cit. p.412. 26. Personal communication from the Director, Sheffield City Libraries, to the author. 28. Elizabeth Wilson, Onl.v Halfway to Paradise: Women in Post-War Britain 1945-1968, London: Tavistock 1980, pp.25-6. 29. Hilary Land, 'Who cares for the family?'. Journal ofSocial Policy, vol.7, no.3, 1978, pp.257-84. 30. Ann Oakley, op.cit. p.7. 31. Elizabeth Wilson, Only Halfway to Paradise, op.cit. pp.21-2. 32. Ann Oakley, The Sociology ofHousework, London: Martin Robertson 1974, p.42. 142 Further Reading Books Shirley Ardener (ed.l, Defining Females: The Nature of Women in Society, London: Croom Helm in association with the Oxford University Women's Studies Committee 1978. Shirley Ardener (ed.l, Women and Space, London: Croom Helm 1982. Helen Austerberry and Sophie Watson, Women on the Margins: A Study of Single Women's Housing Problems, London: City University 1983. M.W. Barley, The House and Home: A Review of900 Years ofHouse Plan- ning and Furnishing in Britain, London: Studio Vista 1963. Marion Brion and Anthea Tinker, Women in Housing, London: Housing Centre Trust 1980. John Burnett, A Social History of Housing 1815-1970, Newton Abbott: David and Charles 1978. Marshal! Coleman, Continuous Excursions: Politics and Personal Life, Lon- don: Pluto Press 1982. Leonore Davidoff, 'The separation of home and work?' in S. Burman (ed. ), Fit Work for Women, London: Croom Helm 1979. Leonore Davidoff and Catherine Hall, 'The architecture of public and pri- vate life', in A. Sutcliff and D. Frase (edsl, Towards a Pursuit of Urban History, London: Edward Arnold 1982. Leonore Davidoff, Jean L'Esperance and Howard Newby, 'Landscape with figures: home and community in English society', in J. Mitchell and A. Oakley (edsl, The Rights and Wrongs of Women, Harmondsworth: Pen- guin 1976. Michael P. Fogarty, Isobel Alien and Patricia Waiters, Women in Top Jobs 1968-1979, London: Heinemann Educational Books 1981. Catherine Hall, 'The history ofthe housewife', in E. Malos (ed.l, The Politics 143 Making Space ofHousework, London: Allison & Busby 1980, pp.44-71. Dolores Hayden, The Grand Domestic Revolution: A History of Feminist Designs for American Houses, Neighborhoods and Cities, Cambridge, Massachusetts and London: MIT Press 1981. Frank Jenkins, Architect and Patron, London: Oxford University Press 1961. L. McDowell, 'City and home: urban housing and the sexual division of space', in M. Evans and C. Ungerson (eds), Sexual Divisions: Patterns and Processes, London: Tavistock 1983. Rhona and Robert Rapoport, Dual Career Families, Harmondsworth: Pen- guin Books 1971. Alison Ravetz, Remaking Cities: Contradictions of. the Recent Urban Environment, London: Croom Helm 1980. Alison Ravetz, Model Estate: Planned Housing at Quarry Hill, Leeds, Lon- don: Croom Helm for theJoseph Rowntree Memorial Trust 1974. Susana Torre !ed.l, Women in American Architecture, New York: Whitney Library of Design 1977. Gwendolyn Wright, Moralism and the Model Home: Domestic Architecture and Cultural Conflict in Chicago 1973-1913, Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press 1980. Periodicals Architectural Design, Special Issue on Women and Architecture, vol.XLV, no.8, August 1975. S. Francis and F. Bradshaw, 'A woman's place', Slate, no.13, July 1979. Dolores Hayden, 'Collectivising the domestic workplace', Lotus, no.12, Sep- tember 1976, pp.72-89. Liz Jones, 'Cooperative architects', Architects Journal, vol.177, 16 February 1982, pp.42-5. JenniferJones, 'A woman's place', Wedge, no.1, 1977, p.47. Bonnie Lloyde, 'Woman's place, man's place,' Landscape, vol.20, no.1, October 1975, pp.10-13. Gail Malmgreen, Neither Bread Nor Roses: Utopian Feminists and the Eng- lish Working Class,1800-1850, Brighton: John L. Noyce 2nd Pr. 1978. L. Pearson, 'Ideal homes', Spare Rib, no.134, September 1983. Margherita Rendel, 'Ideological measures and the subjugation of women', International Journal ofPolitical Education, vo1.5, 1982, pp.105-20. Signs, the Journal of Women in Culture and Society, Special Issue: 'Women 144 and the American city', University of Chicago Press Supplement, vol.5 no.3, Spring 1980. Gwendolyn Wright, ' "Sweet and clean": the domestic landscape in the pro- gressive era', Landscape, vol.20, no.1, October 1975, p.38. Unpublished theses Jane Darke, The Design ofPublic Housing: Architects'Intentions and Users' Reaction, PhD dissertation, University ofSheffeld 1983. Sue Francis, New Women New Space: Towards a Feminist Critique of Building Design, MA thesis, the Department of General Studies, the Royal College of Art May 1980. Barbara McFarlane, The Houses Women Want: An Examination ofthe Work ofthe Women's Housing Sub-Committee in the Ministry ofReconstruction, 1918, Dip.Arch. thesis, Polytechnic ofCentral London 1982. Anne Thorne, Women's Creativity: Architectural Space and Literature, Dip.Arch. thesis, Polytechnic of Central London 1979. Further Reading 145 Index Addiaon, Chriatopher, 28 advertiainl(, 81. 106. 107 Anderaon, E.G.• 19 an:hitects: attitude& of, 12, 13-15; buildera and, vii. 101. 102-5: elaaa and,l3, 16, 102: clients and, 102-5; criticiama of,l>-6: dominant JII"OUp, 2. 11, 13: future poaaibilitiea. 24-5: male predominance, 2, 11. 13: profeaaionalaJ(II"IIIldizement, 102-3; role of, 100-2; skills. 101-2, 104; sLatua, 12; Lraini111. ll,IZ-13, 21; uaeraand, vii, 3,ll, 12. 13, 14,24: women as, B. 11, 16-18, 19-23.26, 89-106; workinl(-claaa, 11. 15; ue a/10 (ollowi"'l entry childcare, 9, 41, 47, 49, 54, 72, 79, 90,120, 122-3 SH at.o (oi/Dwi"'l entry children, houaee and, 64, 66, 120, 120-36 AH also preuiDus entry Churchill, Winaton S., 109 Civic ReaLaurants Bill and Act, 116, 116 clients,10Z-6SHalsoarchiLecta, uaenand Conservative Women'a Refonn Group, 114 conaumer durablea, 72, 74, 87, 13G-1AH al8o houaekeepiq, mechanisation of conLal!ioua diaeaaea, 62, 63 cooking, 106, 107 cooka, 106-7, ll2 c:o-operativee, architectural, 24 an:hitecture: deLenninism.IO; feminiam and, 6.B-10.16,24-5,28,34.63.89.~:aocial ll7 chanp and. 37; aocial realities and. 38; see alao pi"Puious tnlry Anny Bureau ofCurrent Affaira, 114-15 babiee. 1 2 2 - 3 - a/10 childcare Balham Food and Book Cooperative, 97. 98, 104 Barton, Eleanor. 27-a baLhrooma. 31. 72, 86 bedrooma, 63, 78 Beveridl(e Repart, 21 'bill ofquantitiea', 100 Blake. Sophia Jea, 19 Branford. Sybella, 28 Britiah ReaLaurants, I08-19 bubble di&l(rama, 97 buildera: architects and, vii. 101. IOZ-6 buildinK industry: architects, buildera, clients. relationahipa between, IOZ-6 buildinK rei(Uiations. 3 buildinl(l: acceaaibility, 11: ideolol(iea behind. 12; aocial needa and. 6, 6; women'slivea, effects on, ll-12 see a/ao environment, women and: •ee alsu architects, houain11 BumeLL. John. 67 care, 39, 40,41 Charlea. Beaaie Ada, 19 Charlea. Ethel Mary. 19 148 council houain11. 13-16, 28. 63, 74-a, 78, 79, Crowfey,J. Hunt,ll3 Dalaton Children's Centre, 94-6, 98-9, 104 Darli111. Sir William, ll6, 16 Davidoff, Lenora, 7 decision-maki..,,pnder difference, 103 design, feminist approach to, viii, ~ deeign guides, 78, 81-a dini111 rooms, 74, 76. 78, 68 divisionoflabourbypnder,4, liSseeat.o women, aLereotypes of domeaticity, ideology of, 1 domeatic servants, 65, 66, 60, 64, 66, 72, 79 drawingaue plans Drew,Jane, 20,21,107 Dudley, CommitLee, 74,76 electrical equipment, 72, 87, 13G-l Electricians' Trade Union, 113-14 Elephant and Castle ResLaurant, 110 Emmott, Gertrude, 27 employment, 1; women's, 38, 92, 108, 118 environment, women and, 12, 37-a4 factory canLeena, 109 family: houain11 and, SI-a; ideology of, 81-a. 117, 118 u e also (ollowi"'l entrks and nuclear family family life: idealization of, 74, 75; privatization of, 55 'family wage', 37, 71 feminist movement see women's movement Feminist Design Collective, 89, 91 first world war, 36 Food, Ministry of, 109, Ill, 112,115 freezers, 130-1 fridges, 130 Friedan, Betty, 38 Fry, Maxwell, 20 garden city cottages, 69-71 gender roles, 26, 31, 36, 83, 85, 112. 114; environment and, 37-54 see also women, stereotypes of gentlemen's town houses, 64--6, 67, 72 George. David Lloyd see Lloyd George, David GLC (Greater London Council!, 44: Women's Committee. 24, 53--4 Great Exhibition !18511, 61,62 Greater London Council see GLC Greece, 64 Gretna Green, 29 Hall, Catherine 7 Hayden, Dolores, 7, 108. 117 high-rise flats, 5-6,47 home: 'ideal', 1; outside world, relationship with, 87; work, separation from, 1-2, 12. 39, 40, 44, 135; 'home cooking', 106; home ownership. 71, 72 Homes for Today and Tomorrow see Parker-Morris Report Homesgarth, 34, 35 'Home Truths' exhibition, viii, 89 house design, women's roles and, 55-80 households, 55, 56. 59, 79 housekeeping, co-operative, 34, 36 housework, 2, 7, 32, 34, 66, 69, 72, 85, 88, 121: attitudes to, 131-3; ideology of, 7, 38; mechanization of, 55--6, 72, 74, 79,87 see also consumer durables; men and 78, 108, 117; socializing aspects of, 117-18; time spenton,85,87, 107,117 housing: co-operative, 34, 35; in 1920s, 26--36; in 1960s and 1970s, 76-9; morals and. 61; state policies and, 118, 119 see also council housing; women consulted about, 27-36, 69, 92; working-class. 28, 29, 61, 63; see also preceding and following entries, architects, council housing housing estates, 29, 30, 44--52: rural settings, 44, 46, 47; see also council housing housing manuals, 44-52 housing societies, 61 Housing the Family, 78, 81, 82, 86,87 Howard, Ebenezer, 35 Introduction to Housing Layout, 44, 45, 48, 50 Kerr, Robert, 37, 63. 64, 65. 79 kitchens, 12, 31, 32. 56, 66, 69, 72, 74. 76. 78. 79, 80, 82, 85, 87,88,107.133 Labour Party, 113, 115 Lambeth Women's Workshop. 92-4. 99. 104 Land, Hilary, 117 Landes, A. Clapham, 35 LCC !London County Council!, I l l see also GLC Ledeboer, Judith, 74 Letchworth Garden City. 34 lighting, 71 living rooms, 31, 56, 78. 79,88 Lloyd George. David, 26-7 Local Government Board, Design Manual, 30-1,33 lodgers, 63 London County Council. Ill see also GLC lunch clubs. 116 McDowell, Linda. 37.40 malnutrition, 119 Mass Observation, 110.112 'materialist feminists'. 117-18 Matrix, vii-viii, 8, 89, 96. 98, 102. 104. 105 Meadoway Green, 34 meals on wheels. 116 Milton Keynes, 39-40 mobility, 39-44 model dwellings. 61-3.71 models (architectural I, 98-9 Modern Movement. 5. 20 National Council for Social Services, 112-13. 114 National Council of Women, 27 New Architecture Movement, vii New Earswick. York. 71 new towns, 47 nuclear family, 55, 71. 77. 78, 79, 81, 82. 85, 88,134 Oakley, Ann, 118 Parker, Barry, 69,70 Parker-Morris Report, 76-9, 82 parlours, 28, 29, 32, 69. 76, 78, 80 Peel, Dorothy, C., 28 Pitt Club, Cambridge, 110 planning restrictions, 3 plans, 96-8: reading, 56-9 poverty, 116, 119 Pre-War Practices Act, 36 privacy, 2, 61, 64, 79, 84 public housing see council housing public space, women and, 37-54 public transport, 40, 54 Quarry Hill estate, 47 Index 147 Making Space rape, 41.51-2 Ravetz, Aliaon, 47 Reconatruction, Miniatry or.27, 28,31 Reevea. Maud Pember, 29, 36 Rendel, Margherita. 18 rents, 32. 61 RIBA IRoyallnatituteofBritiah An:hitectsl, 19,23,30 Rice, Marpry Spring. 45 rickets, 119 Roberta, Henry, 62 1'00!118, poaition and meor.55, 56, 133 Rowbotham. Sheila, 20 Rowntree. Seebohm, 27 RowntreeCompany. 71 Samuel, Raphael. 72 achool dinners, 116 Scott. Eliubeth. 20, 21 aculleri811, 32, 63, 69 aemi-detached hoW1811, 66.71-3 aenrants 11ft dom811tic oenrants Sell Diacrimination Act, 106 Bell rol811 11ft gender rol811 Shafteebury. Lord, 61 Shak811peare Memorial Theatre. 20 aingle people, 76 Society ofWomen Property Managers, 28 Space in th~Hom~. 82-3.88 'apecillcation ofworka', 98. 100 Stackwell Health Centre.IIO-e. 97 Sweden,118 take-away food. 119 terrace hoW1811. ~ toilate.63 townhouaea. Victorian.~.67. 72 town planning. 38-11. 44. 53 trade uniona. 37 l.nlnaport. 39, 40. 41. 64 Tudor Waiters Committee, 28, 31-2, 71 tumble driers, 131 Unwin, Raymond, 28-S, 69, 70 ventilation, 71 Victorian town houaea, 63-6, 67, 72 violence, male, 6-7,41, 46, 49, 51,90 'viaualamenity', 49 waahiq macbinea, 130 water heating, 32, 34 weavers' cottapa, 5~1 Webb, Beatrice, 27 Well Hall eatete, 29 W -iuter,Marquiaof,64 Wilaon, Elillllbeth, 118 woman: mobility and,_39-44, 53; atereotypea of, 3, 16: cooking and, 106, 107-8: environment and, 37-64: home and, 2, 26, 61,64,69, 71, 78,81-8,118nea1Bogender rolea Women and Houaing Group, 7 'Women and Space' conference, vii Women's Aid, 6-7 Women'a Building Co-op, 105 women'• centrea, 90 Women's Cooperative Guild, 27, 28 Women'• Group on Public Welfare, 114 Women'• Houaing Sub-Committee, 26, 27, 28. 31-2~38,69 Womet1 a Labour League, 27. 28 women'amovement,3.5,6-8,11,17,18, 20. 24-5, 27, 90 11ft alao architecture, feminism and women's refugea, 90 Waolf, Vii'Jiinia, 84 Waotton, Lord, 109 Wright, Gwendolin, 7 WVS (Women'• Voluntary ServiceI, 108, 109 148 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource MATRIX https://nam.maydayrooms.org/files/original/a114c9fc0437cb74ba5d62926965d909.pdf 7fe162720c4893a762b4494a7e6a47ec Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Feminist Group Description An account of the resource This developed a feminist agenda within the NAM critique. Alongside feminist consciousness raising and other feminist political groups, women within NAM came together to develop a feminist understanding of the built environment and building industry. The group acted to advise women in a range of campaigning issues. A special issue of Slate on feminism was produced in July/ August 1978. Emerging from the group was a' Feminist Design Collective' which became ‘Matrix' in 1980, producing the book ‘Making Space - Women and the Manmade Environment', which has been on architecture booklists for 35 years, and the design practice and Technical Aid Centre. <br /><br />The majority of this archive is held at the <a href="http://www.matrixfeministarchitecturearchive.co.uk" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Bishopsgate Institute</a>. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource WOMEN AND SPACE Conference Programme Subject The topic of the resource Conference Programme WOMEN AND SPACE (2 pages) : Feminist Anthropology, Architecture and Community Description An account of the resource 1.00 p.m.: Lunch break. 2.00 pie SJ. 1b) i 1d) 19 Soe OPW) 2._ 30: Workshops. ————ee . Design Workshop (Anne Thorne). 445: Discussion. . Weekend \ehbol , Caxton House, 129 St John's Way, London N 19 (Archway tube) Admit One (£2 paid) KATE YOUNG ' Vib VENNESS ~ WOMEN AN SPACE aeee feminist architecture, antthitopology and community Saturday 10, Sunday 11 March - 10 am prompt to 5.30 pm each’ day | . Re ie”ag ee EG | j for women's solidarity of these different kinds of urban locality. is from the Institute of Development Studies, Sussex University; a is a social anthropologist. She will say a few words on the effectu which the installation of piped water had on women's social life in a village in Mexico in which she did her field-work. = ,poaweA WA - pofrrervere 1 ly Ay?) 2 we af Veep mind Brattonafcrew « DENISE ARNOLD ” is a practising architect, and will look at the influence of design guides in reinforcing the privatisation of the nuclear family and the isolation and oppression of women within the context of mass housing. chairs the Housing Committee of the Islington (Labour) Council, and has been an active campaigner for working-class women's rights for a number of years. She will be discussing the practical difficulties which she has faced both inside and outside the council aS planning and architectural policies have changed within the area in recent times. PEGGY LAGLE is a N.U.P.E. shop-steward and women's representative on Greenwict. Trades Council. She will say a few words on “What kind of housing Etc like to see", particularly in the light of her experience living ina 30 year-old 8—storey block of flats. ite sasDa CN! i aes problems and Housing since the nineteenth century (Julienne Hanson). The political struggle for good: housing (Val Venness). Cuba: community, buildings, living and working spaces (Dr. Mo Mowlan). History and women's spaces’ (Susan House as an image of self-psychological perception (Claire Cooper). Design Guides, co-ops, creches, society co-operative dwellings {Sarah Strong). . Walker). ~AMFWh ere) 18 uF Sunday: 10.00 a.i.: SUSAN WALKER is an archaeologist at one: of the major London museums, participating in the preparation of an exhibition on everyday life in classical antiquity. She will be looking atywomen and physical space in antiquity, both in ceremonial and domestic life. JULIENNE HANSON will talk on developments in housing forms since the nineteenth century. She will be looking at life in traditional urban streets and in their modern counterparts~--high-density, high-rise estates and low-density ,.ldow=rise suburbs——-and will be examining the consequences for- women's solidarity of these-different kinds of unban locality. KATE YOUNG is from the Institute of Development Studies, Sussex University, ava is a social anthropologist. She will say a few words on the effects which the installation of piped water had on women's social life in a village in Mexico in eee did her Pield-wopk ee : POU seein — pptwevt -e { yng, fend May) Yo aif wee mut Bir afar af srowTy « DENISE ARNOLD ” is a practising architect,’ and will look at the influence of design guides in reinforcing the privatisation of the nuclear family and the isolation and oppression of women within the context of mass housing. > as ViL VENNESS 4 chairs the Housing Committee of the Islington (Labour) Council, and has been an active campaigner for working-class women's rights for a number of years. She will be discussing the practical problems and difficulties which she has faced both inside and outside the council @S planning and architectural policies have changed within the area in recent times. PEGGY EAGLE is.a N.U.P.E. shop=steward and women's representative on Greenwictk Trades.Council. She will say a few words on “What kind of housing I'd like to see", particularly inthe Light of her experience living in a 30 year-old 8-storey block of flats. 1.00 p.m.: Lunch break. 2.00 p.m. Soe Des SH OW 2.30: Workshops. Housing since the nineteenth century (Julienne Hanson). The political struggle for good*housing (Val Venness). Cuba: community, buildings, living and working spaces (Dr. Mo Mowlan). History and women's spaces’ (Susan Walker). House as an image of self-psychological perception (Claire Cooper), Design Guides, co-ops, creches, society co-operative dwellings (Sarah Strong). . . . Design Workshop (Anne Thorne). | anW> Whe '. 10.00 a.m.: ANN BLISS 2,00 p.m, P\fZ EROGRAMME Saturday: 1.00 p.m.: Lunch break. WOMEN AND SPACE; Feminist Anthropology, Architecture ana Community. Weekend School: March 10-11, 1979. SHIRLEY ARDNER CLATRE COOPER 1. Women: and Builders (lea by Krystyna Domanska). 2. Women in Housing Co-ops (Seeenany 3. The St. Francis Sq. Case Study (Claire Cooper). 4. Women and Space (dulienne Hanson, Bill Hillier). 2. Women, Space and Human Evolution (Denise Arnold, Chris Knight). 6. Defining Female (Shirley Ardner),. ; £.00 poms: SHOESWRING THEATRE: "HOUSEWORK", tL will be looking at present-day housing from the standpoint of her own personal experience as.a woman with two young children and as qa social work assistant, and will talk about why she has, found anthropological knowledge concerning women in other cultures relevant.! BILL HILLIER and JULIENNE HANSON and teaching on the comparative study of architecture and spatial organizatioinn different cultures, BILL HILLIER will look at the social forces behind changes in urban Space which have taken place in the twentieth century. He will suggest a framework for discussing the relationship between the built environment and forms of community. JULIENNE HANSON will sketch an overview. of how different societies organize the relationships between men and women in space, suggesting how the organization of space can be used in weakening or strengthening women's solidarity. iS a social anthropologist at Queen Elizabeth House, Oxford. Her topic will be ‘Defining Female'—-the title of a book which she has recently edited, and which was sponsored by the Oxford University Women's Studies Committee. trained in &eography and urban planning, has worked as a planner and researcher in Britain, Sweden, Fuerto Rico and the USA, She is now Associate Professor at the Department of Architecture and Landscape at Berkeley. She will be talking about St. Francis Sq., a case study of an inner city multi-racial housing co-operative in San Francisco, both as researcher and as resident, i Pee Pay 4.00 p.m.: Workshops. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource NAM Feminist Group Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived John Murray Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 10-11 March 1979 https://nam.maydayrooms.org/files/original/db7e42d171efce2e86ec1a3796030199.pdf 8adcd7600e7651b0413ddb5d7e541884 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Feminist Group Description An account of the resource This developed a feminist agenda within the NAM critique. Alongside feminist consciousness raising and other feminist political groups, women within NAM came together to develop a feminist understanding of the built environment and building industry. The group acted to advise women in a range of campaigning issues. A special issue of Slate on feminism was produced in July/ August 1978. Emerging from the group was a' Feminist Design Collective' which became ‘Matrix' in 1980, producing the book ‘Making Space - Women and the Manmade Environment', which has been on architecture booklists for 35 years, and the design practice and Technical Aid Centre. <br /><br />The majority of this archive is held at the <a href="http://www.matrixfeministarchitecturearchive.co.uk" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Bishopsgate Institute</a>. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource BUILDING A FUTURE FOR WOMEN IN ARCHITECTURE Subject The topic of the resource NAM Feminist Group Poster Description An account of the resource oe} >) ce PeAADC ECC| SNOV-ZASSINA SAWIGLA BAM ERVIN REE TIM) Le’ : 5 : 4 :Ei : =] s red ea SPO. tek Ahh = FiMMSH Ak) AF che at is-= :‘owe rue’- aeA teete En Lnenenehrae A,DESIGNINGFROMOURSELVESWITHOURSISTERS... MOAT TRRTs lait set iae = WE AS WOMEN MUST FIND OUR OWN IDENTITY IN THE ENVIRONMENT BY “ONINOLLIGNOD U0 ONIKOOUMAO Ad a. ROPRE IDENTITE DANS ENVIRONNEMENT ““ENAINNOLLIINOD (RLLON ENVINOHUAS Na UT RACY THAN 4) Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource NAM Feminist Group Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived John Murray Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1978? https://nam.maydayrooms.org/files/original/65146d3e8b2ebaf5e600643327f214f2.pdf 3c3a05b27c7ca1fffed2072662ed7bee Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Feminist Group Description An account of the resource This developed a feminist agenda within the NAM critique. Alongside feminist consciousness raising and other feminist political groups, women within NAM came together to develop a feminist understanding of the built environment and building industry. The group acted to advise women in a range of campaigning issues. A special issue of Slate on feminism was produced in July/ August 1978. Emerging from the group was a' Feminist Design Collective' which became ‘Matrix' in 1980, producing the book ‘Making Space - Women and the Manmade Environment', which has been on architecture booklists for 35 years, and the design practice and Technical Aid Centre. <br /><br />The majority of this archive is held at the <a href="http://www.matrixfeministarchitecturearchive.co.uk" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Bishopsgate Institute</a>. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Working Womens Charter Subject The topic of the resource Poster for National Working Women's Charter Conference, Lanchester Polytechnic, Coventry 4pp Description An account of the resource Organised by the Working Women’s Charter Campaign in Coventry and London for al groups and organisations fighting for the demands of the Charter National Working Women’s Charter Conference YOU ARE INVITED TO THE 10th and 11th APRIL 1976 attheLANCHESTER POLYTECHNIC, COVENTRY Sponsored by Westminster Trades Council Coventry Trades Council ATTI Henley College, Coventry AUEW/TASS No.16 Divisional Council RACS Education Committee The Working Women's Charter WE pledge ourselves to agitate and organise to achieve the following aims: I The rate for the job, regardless of sex, at rates negotiated by the trade unions, with a national minimum wage below which no wages should fall. 2 Equal opportunity of entry into occupations and in promotion, regardless of sex and marital status. 3 Equal Education. Training for al occupations and compulsory day release for 16-19 year olds In employment. All over the country there are now action groups of al kinds including forty-nineWorking Women’s Charter groups, and two Regional Co-ordinating Committees, using the Charter as a framework for action in the localities and within the labour movement. The Working Women's Charter outlines the basic pieteduisites for complete equality at all levels of a woman's social, economic and Political life. The new legislation on Equal Pay and Sex Discrimination will by itself do little to provide these material prerequisites and will therefore have little effect on the lives of working women. The position of women will only begin to change if the organisation at a grass roots level becomes more effective, and if the labour movement (especially the unions) takes up al the aspects of women’s oppression and Not just those relating to employment and training. A struggle around the demands of the Charter could become the means of stimulating a real fighting movement both within and without the trade union movement. The National Conference hopes to Clarify perspectives and strategy for the campaign around the Charter, and within this framework to amend the Charter in order to make it a more effective weapon for the struggle in the forthcoming period. Without some form of structure, however, itwould be difficult, ifnot impossible, to implement decisions made at Conference, and it is hoped also that decisions will be taken on the development of both regional structure and some form of national structure. All groups and organisations supporting the demands of the Chaner are invited to send delegates and observers. Those which are interested but have not yet passed the Charter are invited to send observers only. The main themes of the Conference will be: Perspectives and strategy, amendments to the Working Women's Charter, and regional & national structure for the Campaign. PROVISIONAL AGENDA The Conference will start promptly at 10am Saturday. Saturday: 10.00 Registration and Coffee. 10.30 Analysis of achievements and problems; speaker; standing orders; the Standing Orders Committee will take a list of speakers (maximum of 5 minutes each) from the floor, under headings, and will be as flexible as possible given the number of contributions. 12.00 Workshops on the different campalans relating to the WWC, eg Nursery Campaign; the fight in the unions for adoption of the Charter, women's caucuses and unionisation; etc. The motions and papers submitted will be a guide as to workshop subjects. 1.30 Lunch. 2.30 Workshops. 4.00¢o fee; submission of amendments. 4.30 Plenary Session. Sunday: 10.00 Resolutions. 1.00 Lunch. 2.00 -5.00 Resolutions. DELEGATES The following organisations, providing that they support al the clauses of the Charter, are invited to send a maximum of four delegates each: Charter roups, women’s groups, other action groups, tenants associations, Co-op Parties, Political parties (constituency Labour Parties, Young Socialists etc), national unions, union branches, trades councils. Delegate Status will be related to the information given on WWC activity on the enclosed application form for credentials. Only delegates will be able to vote. OBSERVERS Observers. are invited from organisations which support or which do not yet support the Charter. Observers are required to give details of their organisation's activities on the Charter, or reason for interest, as observer status will be related to information given on credentials form. Those from supporting organisations which for any reason are unable to send delegates are requested also to complete this section. Observers can take part in the debate but not vote. Confirmation will go out a fortnight before the Conference, when delegate numbers are known. VISITORS Those who cannot come as delegates or observers and who support the Charter may be able to attend as visitors, but not contribute to the debate. FEES Delegates: £1.50; Observers: £1.00; Visitors: 50p per day, or free if claimants. (Pteawe make out cheques to the Working Women's Charter Conterence). 7 Eighteen week maternity leave with full net pay before and after a live child; seven weeks after birth if the child is still-born. No dismissal during Pregnancy or maternity leave. No loss of security, pension or Promotion prospects. 8 Family planning clinics supplying free contraception to be extended to cover every locality. Free abortion to be readily available. THE WORKING WOMEN'S CHARTER was drawn up by the London Trades Council in March 1974. Although this Trades Council no longer exists due to rorganteation by the TUC, the Charter has now been passed by at least thirty seven other trades councils from Edinburgh to Basingstoke. It also has the official support of the following national unions: ABAS, ACTT, ATTI, CPSA, Musicians’ Union, AUEW, NALGO, NSMM, NUJ, NUPE, NUS. Support comes, too, from forty five branches of other unions than those above, and eighty- five other organisations (eg Political Committee of the LCS Ltd., Nalgo Action Group, Brent Federation of Tenants Associations, Education Committee of the RACS, Constituency Labour Parties and Co-op Parties). 9 Family allowances to be increased to £2.50 per child, including the first. 10.. campaign amongst women to take an active Part in trade unions and in political life, so that they may exercise influence commensurate with their numbers, and to campaign amongst trade union men, so that they too may work to achieve these aims. sinieaia yOOOe 4 Working conditions to be, without deterioration of previous conditions, the same for women as for men. 5 The removal of al legal and bureaucratic Impediments to equality, eg with regard to tenancies, mortgages, pension schemes, taxation, passports, control over children, social security payments, hire purchase agreements. 6 Improved provision of local authority day nurseries, free of charge, with extended hours to suit working mothers. Provision of nursery classes in day nurseries. More nursery schools. MOTIONS Organisations sending delegates are invited to send in motions. Motions should be clearly separated into the following three categories: 1)Perspectives and strategy; 2)Amendments to the Working Women's Charter;3)Regional and national structure for the Campaign. In order that motions can be circulated in advance it is urgently requested that these, with papers and application forms, be returned by March 1st to: WWC Conference Secretariat, c/o Helen Gurdon, Flat 4, 39 Newbold Terrace East, Leamington Spa, Warwicks. (NOT, please, to London WWCC). Any motions sent in after March 1st will be treated as emergency motions, and must therefore be on ‘emergencies’. The final date for emergency motions is two weeks before Conference, i.e. 29th March, but any received after that date may be given sympathetic treatment. All emergency motions must obtain a two-thirds majority vote from Conference before they can be discussed. AMENDMENTS ELECTIONS PAPERS Organisations are invited to prepare papers. Those who can should produce 500 copies, and others, ifthey can, please send papers on dual stencils for Roneo and Gestetner machines, typed for A4 paper with a donation of £2 to cover duplicating costs. We cannot undertake typing. (If any problems, discuss with secretariats in London and Coventry.) Please keep Papers as short as possible and send to Leamington Spa by March 1st. CREDENTIALS APPLICATION FORM isenclosed. Ifmore are required, please write to: WWCC, 49 Lowther Hill, London SE23 1PZ (01-690-5518). CRECHE: there will be a creche available for both days. Will all parents wishing to bring children please state so on registration form and confirm by telephone to 0926-27813 by not less than one week before conference; and please bring toys, food etc. REPORTS of the Conference will be sent to all delegates after the Conference. | What You Can Do 1. Place it on the agenda of the next meeting of your organisation and, most importantly, ask that ENOUGH TIME be given for a thorough discussion of suitable motions to be sent and papers to be written. 2. Have dircussions In advance of the meeting on likely motions and the subject of Papers. 6. If you are unable at the last minute to attend the conference, send someone else In your place with a letter of transfer and the necessary papers. LONDON SECRETARIAT: 49 Lowther Hill, London SE23 1PZ (01-690-5518) for matters before March 1st. COVENTRY SECRETARIAT: c/o Helen Gurdon, Flat 4, 39 Newbold Terrace East, Leamington Spa, Warwicks, for matters after March 1st. Any amendments must be sent to the Coventry Secretariat by 29th March. They will also be accepted from workshops by close of session on the first day of Conference. The national structure decided upon may necessitate elections, so would delegates please come prepared to make nominations. These will be sent out with motions, papers compiled as conference notes, agenda, voting cards and an accomodation list, etc, two weeks before the Conference. PLEASE RETURN ALL FORMS, MOTIONS, PAPERS, TO: Conference Secretariat, c/o Helen Gurdon, Flat 4, 39 Newbold Terrace East, Leamington Spa, Warwicks, and NOT TO WWCC, 3. Ask your organisation to sponsor the conference In name and if possible financially as well, to a suggested minimum of £2. 4. Ask your organisation to advertise the conference In thelr very next mailing to members or affiliated organisations. 5. Make sure that all registration forms, moneys, and papers are returned by March 1st (to Leamington Spa, not London) in order to help with the task of organisation. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Working Women's Charter Campaign Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived John Murray Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 10,11 April 1976