‘Mama let me be’: Space, Place and Gender in the Post-War American Metropolis

Abstract

Women’s traditional gender roles delineated not only women’s domain, but also their place, as men had been in charge of ruling the main power structures of the society: religion, politics and the army. Women’s new occupations after the Second World War and their active social and professional lives opposed the traditional family and deconstructed it. This paper focuses on how gendered spaces are also challenged and restructured through women’s emancipation and the rise of the LGBTQ community during the post-war time and how the intersections of gender, power and space influence the discourse on sexuality, ownership and autonomy in the American metropolis.