Space is a gendered technology because space gets designed by people who have gendered assumptions. Almost all space is gendered, but there are different types. Public space is gendered in a different way than domestic space, and different things take place in each place.

This exhibit concerns the design of public space, specifically the Virginia Tech campus parking lots. Women in public spaces often feel more fear than men -- a dark parking lot feels dangerous to women specifically because of the female fear of sexual violence. Men can turn allegedly public city streets into a private male jungle where women are excluded or, in the words of the poet Marge Piercy, "stalked like the tame pheasants who are hand-raised and then turned loose for hunters to shoot, an activity called sport."

Most men are "at home" on the streets, women are not. Because space over time has come to "belong" to men, they can do whatever they want to women and women have fear while being alone on the streets and in parking lots. Public space has become a man’s domain and a women’s area of defense. Women are reminded that men feel more at home on the streets than they do when men direct "friendly" comments, blown kisses, clucks, whistles, and obscene gestures at women passing by. Such invasive behaviors violate a woman’s self/other boundary, leaving her unable to control her own privacy.

At Virginia Tech, the parking for commuter students is unsafe. The blue lights are not at all strategically placed. The Litton Reeves Parking lot has one blue light but the size of the lot is enormous. Women should be able to park around the Drillfield after dark, not after 8:00, in order to get to buildings that border it. The closet parking lots are the commuter lot and the Cassell lot.

More blue lights and street lamps are needed on campus, especially in the parking lots as well as well traveled routes from parking. Why is the well lit parking lot a twenty four-hour F/S zone? In order to go to buildings like Pritchard, one has to park on the street or in Cassell. Both unsafe, not well lit, and lack safety. Just walking to Owens or Hokie Grill invites trouble, for the parking lot is a 24 –hour F/S zone. However, Oak Lane residents are able to park there. Other must risk walking from the bookstore, street, or other lots. There aren’t any blue lights and the lighting is terrible.

Can and should women be considered differently when parking lots and lighting systems are designed? Is gender discrimination occurring by design?

Suggested Reading:
Leslie Kanes Weisman, Discrimination by Design: A Feminist Critique of the Man-Made Environment. Urbana: U of Illinois Press, 1992.