Women’s practices in public spaces: representations, bodily strategies, inequalities. Examples of Caen, Rouen, and Portsmouth

Abstract

Le Bigot, Eugénie. (2022) Pratiques de femmes dans les espaces publics: représentations, stratégies corporelles et inégalités sociales. Une comparaison entre Caen, Rouen et Portsmouth. Géographie. Université de Caen Normandie.

Keywords:

• Women
• gender
• intersectionality
• body
• urban public spaces
• social inequalities

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank my supervisor Jean-Marc Fournier for his support as well as all the members of my jury, Nadine Cattan, Corine Luxembourg, Karine Duplan, Emmanuel Jaurand and Marion Tillous for their constructive comments and the rich debate we shared. Special thanks to Frederique Turbout for correcting my thesis, to Francisco Romera and the team of ESO-Caen PhD students for their endless support. This PhD was funded by the University of Caen, to which I am grateful.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 All participants in this study were anonymised.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Eugénie Le Bigot

Eugénie Le Bigot holds a PhD in geography and planning from Caen University, France. She is a researcher at the ESO-Caen laboratory (UMR CNRS 6590), Caen, France, and tutor at Falmouth University, United Kingdom. She defended her thesis entitled "Women’s practices in public space: representations, bodily strategies and social inequalities. A comparison between Caen, Rouen, and Portsmouth" in December 2022. Her work uses mixed methods (interviews, comparative exploratory walks, counts, participatory maps) and in particular Geographic Information Systems (GIS) as a tool for feminist geography. Her work focuses on a geographical approach to the body and reflects a desire to integrate gendered representations and experiences into the thinking and construction of urban planning. Since 2022, she has also been working on sustainable tourism, particularly the urban and social transformations associated with tourism. She has worked on various inter-disciplinary research projects. She participates in the CABaS (Care et cAdre de vie en BAnlieueS) participatory action-research project launched in 2022 and coordinated by Corinne Luxembourg, Emmanuelle Faure, and Nicolas Lebrun.