ABSTRACT
The chapter highlights women's design service (WDS) early days, when the Greater London Council (GLC) radicalism allowed the organization to embark on a totally innovative path and, second, the mid-1990s when the idea of participation gave WDS a role in an otherwise not very gender-sensitive political environment. WDS' application for funding was successful but it carried a number of conditions. Whilst the late 1980s was a period where the impact of the GLC and the legitimation of feminist policy still radiated into the world of municipal planning, the early 1990s saw a political shift towards conservatism and an anti-feminist backlash. When the women's design service was first established in 1983, both the physical environment and the political milieu suited and supported masculine norms. The New Architecture Movement fought for change, and the Architectural Association gave a visible academic profile to gender in a conference on Women and Space in 1979.
