Traveling to the Architecture of Femininity and Fear

With this essay, I take a critical look at how gender boundaries are constructed and/or reified via representations from the tourist industry in the provision of all-female hotel floors dedicated to the solo woman traveler in urban locations. As gender identity intersects with other political identities, I also investigate the implications for social class and race in the cities where the archetypical woman traveler acts as a consumer of the hotel industry. The rhetoric and representations of major hotel chains exposes how, what they propose as a supportive architecture for women, actually constricts the movement of women in the city by reinforcing the threat of crime.

Volume Editors
Marilys R. Nepomechie & Robert Gonzalez

ISBN
0-935502-54-8