ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the reasons why women are not a sub-set of a human population, and what it will take to stop treating them as such. Two arguments are proposed. First, that the conventional, normal subject for planners is rational and disembodied, an image that coincides with the conventions of masculinity. Consequently, it seems important to invite women as 'special guests' to a process designed for a specific type of subjectivity with which they are not associated in the symbolic structures of Western culture. Second, that planning recapitulates rational disembodiment in its structure and content. A contradiction occurs right at the core of the system such that certain activities occurring within the system are simultaneously essential to it and unable to be recognised. In conclusion, treating women as a sub-set of the human population reinforces the idea of a generic human being, the normative image of which is male.
