ABSTRACT
As in the Roman baths and in the houses of ancient Greece, many societies are aware of the subdivision of public or private spaces into male and female terrains (public toilets, schools, hospitals, etc.). Depending on the culture, the permeability of these areas varies in conformity with the different traditions and social hierarchies reflected in those terrains – as Daphne Spain very graphically documents in her book Gendered Spaces. 1 She argues that the primary form of today’s separation of genders in the Western capitalist world lies in the separation of home and workplace. When production shifted from home to factory and paid work was identified with a family income, it necessarily followed that rooms for male work were outside the home and rooms for female work were bound to the home. 2
