Manoeuvring urban spaces in-between public and private: female agency in early-twentieth-century Gothenburg

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article analyses female agency in early twentieth-century Gothenburg. It argues that female urban practices were a major catalyst for the transformation of urban space in the port city, which has traditionally been attributed to male-dominated activities in trade, industry and urban politics. Drawing on women’s personal memories and on insights offered by theoretical studies that consider gender and mobility as constitutive elements of urban space, the article focuses on women’s mobile practices in the rapidly changing industrial port city: on female migration, on how women navigated the labour market, and on their perception as home-makers. In doing so, it places particular emphasis on how women acted in the blurred boundaries between ‘public’ and ‘private’ spaces and thereby on one of the major ordering principles of urban life.