Gender, Public Space and Social Segregation in Cairo: Of Taxi Drivers, Prostitutes and Professional Women

Abstract

Cairo's cityscape has transformed rapidly as a result of the neoliberal policies that Egypt adopted in the early 1990s. This article examines the spatial negotiations of class in liberalizing Cairo. While much scholarly attention has been devoted to the impact of neoliberal policies on global cities of the South, few studies have adopted an ethnographic focus to examine the everyday negotiations of such transformations. I examine the ways young female upper‐middle‐class professionals navigate Cairo's public spaces, both the safe spaces of the upscale coffee shops and the open spaces of the streets. Their urban trajectories can be read as the footsteps of the social segregation that has increasingly come to mark Cairo's cityscape. I conclude that the bodies of upper‐middle‐class women have become a battleground for new class configurations and contestations, literally embodying both power and fragility of Cairo's upper‐middle class in Egypt's new liberal age.

Constructing sexual risk: ‘Chikan’, collapsing male authority and the emergence of women-only train carriages in Japan

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Public Space in non‐Western Contexts: Practices of Publicness and the Socio‐spatial Entanglement

“…For women in Turkey, shopping malls are among the limited number of social spaces in which they can freely participate in public life and interactions (Erkip, ). De Koning's () research on upper class, socially exclusive coffeehouses occupied by wealthy professional women in Cairo suggests that the withdrawal of middle‐class women into secured social spaces is related to their dilemmatic position between the pursuit of a modern flânerie identity and the cultural constraints on gendered roles and behaviours prescribed by religious doctrines. Feminised and privatised middle‐class spaces manifest both class privileges and the entrenched structure of unequal gender relations.…”

Young lesbians negotiating public space: an intersectional approach through places

“…It has been contended that being visible in an adult, masculine and heterosexual space makes young women subject to the visual domain of the masculine gaze, which is internalized and acts as a panoptic that disciplines young women whether they are seen or not (Valentine 2000). Hence, young women search for safe places where they feel comfortable and protected such as malls and cafeterias (Thomas 2005;Koning 2009;Taylor and Addison 2009). Acknowledging gender differences between young people seems thus crucial to understand their negotiations in public space.…”