Metropolitics

A Place for Women

2025-01-21T06:00:00Z

For over 40 years, a feminist association called Apiaf, based in Toulouse in southwestern France, has been working with female victims of domestic violence. In this interview, members of the association talk about the central role of non-mixity in accommodating and assisting these women, thus guaranteeing a space of protection and emancipation.
Interview conducted by Pauline Delage.
Apiaf (Association pour l'Initiative Autonome des Femmes; "Association for Women's Autonomous Initiative") is

- Interviews / violence, women, non-mixity, associations, gender, feminism, activism

Female Factory Strikes: Emancipatory Non-Mixity?

Ève Meuret-Campfort & translated by Oliver Waine — 2024-01-26T08:14:00Z

The division of industrial labor often places women workers in all-female factories and low-skilled jobs. Ève Meuret-Campfort examines how periods of strike action lead—or do not lead—these workers to politicize and claim this de facto segregation as an instrument of emancipation.
In the industrial working world, women workers often find themselves in de facto non-mixed situations, concentrated in highly feminized employment sectors such as clothing (Maruani and Meron 2012). As a result of

- From the Field / workers, non-mixity, factories, mobilization, women, manual workers, feminism, politicization

Feminist Non-Mixity: For Women or Against Men?

Alban Jacquemart & translated by Oliver Waine — 2023-10-10T05:00:00Z

For women, the choice to gather together serves a variety of objectives within feminist mobilizations. Looking back at the history and significance of these militant practices helps to counteract preconceptions associated with non-mixity.
“It is wrong to claim that non-mixity does not fundamentally impregnate the vision of the world and society of those who turn to this notion, and that it cannot encourage the temptation of withdrawal into a given community. How can we believe that there is

- Essays / feminism, women, history, activism, non-mixity

Where are the Women Architects?

Collectif Architoo & translated by Oliver Waine — 2023-03-31T05:00:00Z

At the 2020 edition of the Albums des jeunes architectes et paysagistes (AJAP) competition, organized by the French ministry of culture, only two women were among the architects nominated. The Architoo collective underlines the persistent inequalities that still mark the careers of female architects.
The Albums des Jeunes Architectes et Paysagistes (“Young Architects' and Landscape Architects' Albums”)—or AJAP—is a biennial competition that was relaunched by the French ministry of culture in

- Debates / architecture, gender, feminism, sexism, architect, women, teaching, education, inequalities

Women Farmers Doing It for Themselves? The Ambiguous Consequences of Non-Mixed Engagement

Clémentine Comer & translated by Oliver Waine — 2022-11-01T06:00:00Z

In the farming world, many women's groups defend the cause of women farmers. Clémentine Comer analyzes the ambivalences of these single-gender spaces, from the perpetuation of traditional visions of male and female roles to the questioning of social inequalities.
In France, organizations devoted to the specific mobilization of women in agriculture – established in the wake of the Catholic young farmers' movement and the widespread teaching of domestic science – took on a new form in the

- From the Field / agriculture, feminism, farming, non-mixity, women

The Slow Violence of Planned Obsolescence

Elise Mason — 2022-09-20T05:00:00Z

Elise Mason critiques planned obsolescence as a form of slow violence. She argues for an ethic of care, rooted in Black feminist thinking and writing, to transform waste and our relationship to it.
---- Series: Urban Wastes, Present and Future “We are all entangled. And the fact that entanglement is a slow death doesn't make it any better; it in fact makes it more gruesome. And I mourn the parts of you that lost feeling today” (Gumbs 2020, pp. 103–104).
I have spent my adult life amid the

- Debates / waste, waste management, environment, consumerism, consumer goods, planned obsolescence, feminism, Black feminism, care ethics, ecology

At the Borders of Europe

Elsa Tyszler & translated by Oliver Waine — 2022-05-13T05:00:00Z

Against the backdrop of the deaths of 27 exiled people, who drowned in the English Channel while trying to reach the United Kingdom in November 2021, Camille Schmoll's book sheds light on the migration tragedy and the responsibility of states and the European Union when it comes the fate of migrant women on the margins of Europe.
Geographer Camille Schmoll conducted her research during a decade (2010-2020) in which the sea became a border-graveyard for Europe's unwanted migrants. Contrary to

- Reviews / migration crisis, migrants, reception, feminism, borders, migration

Marielle Franco and Brazilian Democracy at a Crossroads

Natália Alves & Isabella Gonçalves Miranda & Felipe Magalhães — 2018-06-26T05:00:00Z

Marielle Franco's life and death raised questions about the limits of Brazil's New Republic. It revealed the rising stakes, particularly for women and people of color, following the 2016 coup. In this piece, urban activists Isabella Gonçalves and Natália Alves and geographer Felipe Magalhães place Franco's embodied politics as a direct challenge to the regressive policies and aggressive austerity of the current regime.
We live in times when a culture of violence is a vocal minority of the

- From the Field / social movement, security, violence, corruption, neoliberalism, Latin America, Brazil, LGBTQ+, feminism, activism, Rio de Janeiro, queer, critical racial awareness, austerity, militias, queer theory, state violence, coup

The Political Aesthetics of Drag

Shaka McGlotten — 2015-10-13T05:00:00Z

Drag, or the diverse art form and culture of performance that typically plays with gender and sex, is an integral part of vibrant urban life. It is also often decidedly activist and provocative. Anthropologist Shaka McGlotten uses ethnographic portraits of drag performers to explore how violent political conflict informs drag in New York City, Berlin and Tel Aviv.
Drag ecologies in New York City, Israel/Palestine, and Berlin
Drag is tied to gender impersonation and crossing, but it is also

- Essays / gender, Palestine, Berlin, New York, Israel, drag, feminism, BDSM, Featured, activism, video