The Social Construction of Gendered Space

Brittani Crawford
HON ENG 313

The Social Construction of Gendered Space

While watching the “Speed dating” episode of Sex and the City, the main point of the short clip was obvious: men are not attracted to women who attempt to fit in to a typically masculine career. In this scene, Miranda is a thirty four year-old bridesmaid searching for a date to a wedding, so she desperately tries a speed dating event in New York City. She would find men interested in her, until she revealed that she was a lawyer, recently promoted to partner. They were uninterested in her power and ability to achieve such status on her own, and were rather turned off by her line of work, as it is a typically male career. Finally, Charlotte gives in to these social constructions and typical female stereotypes and lies about being a stewardess. Of course, the man she tells is instantly interested, and she is satiated in her hunger for male attention.

In Barker, Massey argues that ‘the social construction of space will be gendered’. Furthermore, Massey states that the ‘classical western gendering of space is manifested in the division between ‘home’ [female] and ‘workplace’ [male]. This suggests that women tend to be unwelcome in the workplace, as it has traditionally been a place of ‘toughness, hardness, comradeship and reality’ while a women’s place has inexorably been cemented in the home, ‘connoting the secondary values of caring, love, tenderness and domesticity’.

I feel that Miranda, in this scene particularly, is emphasizing the futility of attempting to gain male acceptance in a man’s space. Though the stereotypes are not necessarily as harsh nowadays, women continue to be less valued and respected in the business world, and are more accepted when following traditionally female roles. The fact that she submits to the gender classification and social construction of her sex by assuming a traditionally female role to gain gratification from males emphasizes, in a satirical manner, that females may not have progressed very far from our ‘gender space’ at all. These social classifications of ‘women in the kitchen, barefoot and pregnant’ still hold some sway over how we view women as a gender today. The simple truth is that we are not yet equal to men in the eyes of society, and works such as Sex and the City simply emphasize this.



Works Cited:

Barker, Chris. Cultural Studies Theory and Practice. Minneapolis: Sage Publications Ltd, 2008. Print.

Sex and the City. Dir. Darren Star. Perf. Cynthia Nixon. HBO, 1998. DVD.