Reply to James J. Chriss

Abstract

Professor Chriss makes two points in his response to my ideas about the relationship between gendered spaces and gender stratification. The first is that primacy should be assigned to stratification as the cause of spatial segregation; the second is that degendering spaces will not be effective in reducing gender stratification until women are capable of engaging in the same sexual harassment tactics as men. Although I still resist the necessity for a causal explanation, I find it easier to agree with this argument than with the second assertion, namely that social status relations between the sexes depend on intimidation. It is possible that stratification precedes temporally the spatial segregation of women and men and thus could be identified as the cause of gendered spaces. Yet this insistence on causality downplays the effect of individual agency on structural change. Customs and laws, as formulated and carried out historically by men, reflect the prevailing stratification system. In nineteenth-century America, for example, girls were defined as not worth educating and were not allowed into public schools; women's sensibilities were considered too delicate for the study of medicine, so women did not become doctors. Yet some determined women did receive educations and medical degrees (most notably Elizabeth Blackwell), and eventually opened the doors for others. Deviant women in every era and every society have been catalysts in modifying the relationship between macro-level stratification systems and micro-level gendered spaces. Could gender stratification exist without the spatial segregation of women and men? Yes; it is a complex phenomenon sustained by religious custom, economic structure, and psychological differences, to name only a few of its supports. Could gendered spaces exist without stratification? Possibly, as demonstrated in nonindustrial societies with menstrual huts. Did these huts begin as a celebration of women's solidarity and difference from men, and then contribute to men's fear of women and their attempts to control them? Or did menstrual huts become interpreted (largely by male anthropologists) as examples of women's dangerous uncleanness and cyclical exclusion from the community? I would agree with Mr. Chriss that in most cases, space cannot be used to reinforce status differences that do not already exist. Yet insistence that stratification always precedes segregation risks oversimplifying a complex phenomenon that depends on the recursivity so amply cited in Mr. Chriss's response. The second issue concerns Professor Chriss's statement that women must learn to use