Public and private in feminist theory: disrupting gender hegemony in architecture and urban planning

Abstract

Introduction. The hegemonic androcentric cultural thought that has prevailed for centuries has marked a social place associated with practices that are spatially constructed from gender and that determine power relations that promote cycles of violence against women, with incidence in geographical contexts of Latin America and particularly of Mexico. This place is organized under the public-private binomial, which establishes patterns that reproduce inequalities within a hierarchical position marked from male domination, in which space is not neutral, but obeys a capitalist patriarchal structure that organizes the location and position of men and women. Objectives. In this sense, the present work aims to make a critical reading of the use and materialization of the concept of public and private space in architecture and urbanism. Methodology. In a feminist key. Results and Discussion. It became clear that patriarchal structures of power and violence are reproduced through design, as well as through the “neutralized” incorporation of the category of gender into the ways of designing and making cities. Conclusions. From this, what we can find out is that gender has perpetuated a discourse that hides women, reproducing the same discriminatory neoliberal constructed forms.