Breaking the Gender Code

Georgina Hickey stands as one of the foremost experts on the history of women and the city. In this much needed and highly readable work, Hickey unpacks and questions the systems of social control that declared urban public spaces dangerous for women and girls during the twentieth century. Hickey examines cities throughout the United States and admirably addresses race, class, and sexuality differences among urban women. Women pushed back against the urban gender segregation that arose in the nineteenth century and the variants of this social pressure that endured throughout the twentieth century. Black women and white women, both heterosexual and homosexual, sought to lessen the impact of the gender code that curtailed their access to public space. Everyone who has traversed the urban landscape will understand the power and importance of Hickey’s timely scholarly contribution. This examination of the past helps us to understand the present and the heated debates about gender, sexuality, and urban spaces that continue within public discourse. ~Lisa Krissoff Boehm, Bridgewater State University, author of Making a Way out of No Way: African American Women and the Second Great Migration

Profoundly important. In charting women’s efforts across the nation to secure inclusion in urban public space over the long twentieth century, Georgina Hickey reveals how fundamental gender segregation was--and remains--to 'organizing and stratifying' American society. While gender segregation constrained white Native-born women in the name of protection, 'it also justified harassment and violence against other women,' particularly women of color, immigrant, queer, and working-class women. This is a major contribution to both urban history and women’s, gender and sexuality studies. ~Tamar W. Carroll, Rochester Institute of Technology, author of Mobilizing New York: AIDS, Antipoverty, and Feminist Activism

In charting women’s efforts across the nation to secure inclusion in urban public space over the long twentieth century, Georgina Hickey reveals how fundamental gender segregation was—and remains—to ‘organizing and stratifying’ American society….[G]ender segregation…’justified harassment and violence against other women,’ particularly women of color, immigrant, queer, and working-class women. This is a major contribution to both urban history and women’s, gender and sexuality studies. ~Lit Hub