An Investigation of Southern Women in Southwest Florida and Their Suburban Houses

The American suburbs have evolved into a location and ideal associated specifically with women and children. The suburban experience for women and children was not uniform across the United States but took on distinctive characteristics and attributes unique to each context. Southwest Florida adapted its suburban experience within the framework of a clearly segregated society. A series of interviews with Southern women investigates how their suburban houses were used as a means to encounter, to include and to exclude. Their suburban houses are examined as the primary vehicle for controlling encounters. These interviews provide not only an insight into the practical uses of their houses but also reveal social codes and meanings embedded in how these women met and encountered others. The house played a significant role in establishing their social status. This social status was in large measure dependant on the readily available, inexpensive labor force composed almost entirely of African Americans as a result of segregation. The encounters of white suburban women and their black employees through the system of segregation are considered. Women who lived in southwest Florida in the 1950s and 1960s, the pre Civil Rights era, and suburban women who live in present day southwest Florida were interviewed to provide comparisons between these time frames.

Volume Editors
David Covo & Gabriel Mérigo Basurto

ISBN
0-935502-57-2