Gendered educational spaces in residential childcare 1970-1990

Abstract

This paper explores how gendered educational spaces in the city of Zurich (Switzerland) transformed in the period between 1970 - 1990. Normative expectations concerning gender as well as other categories (i.e. class, sexuality) changed along with the transformation of society. It is to be investigated on how they changed. Current research about residential childcare in Switzerland focusses mostly on earlier periods of the 20th century and shows how educational spaces and practices were shaped by gender norms. Boys and girls, for example, were housed in separate rooms or houses and had gender specific chores (Bombach et al., 2017). With the modernization of society and culture through social movements in the 1960s and 70s the traditional normativity of gender changed. However, the expected “successful” life courses of girls and young women, mainly fixated on their sexuality, stayed a focal point of local agencies (Businger/Ramsauer, 2019). Instead of educating or punishing “fallen girls”, “safehouses” and institutions with new protection and prevention concepts were opened. Considering these concepts, the author asks about the emergence of new gendered norms and how adolescents produced their own space within these constellations of normative expectations (e.g., Elder, 1994). Employing the methodology of Grounded Theory this study examines photographs and textual primary sources from childcare homes of Zurich in the late 1980s with the perspective of spatial theories. The model of space by Henri Lefebvre (1991) with its three dimensions – Spatial Practice, Spatial Representations and Representational Spaces – is guiding the analysis of gendered educational spaces. The paper is part of a DACH research project, which investigates the changing educational spaces in three welfare regions: Tyrol/Vorarlberg (Austria), Hesse (Germany) and Zurich (Switzerland).