Walking the Feminist City

In Where are the Women? (2021), Sara Sheridan claims that our sense of self and where we come from is not confined to history books (2021: 7) arguing that if women don’t see themselves represented in the world around them, the message that girls and women receive is that ‘their stories, and indeed achievements, don’t matter’ (ibid.). Sheridan notes that in her home city of Edinburgh there are more statues of animals than there are of women, and she embarks on an imagining of a Scotland that maps the achievements of women, celebrating their lives and making them visible. In The Feminist City (2021), Leslie Kern argues that ‘physical places like cities matter when we want to think about social change’ (2021: 14), but as Rebecca Solnit reminds us, walking the city streets is not equal: ‘Women have routinely been punished and intimidated for attempting that most simple of freedoms, taking a walk’ (Solnit, 2001: 234). These two elements; of accessing women’s invisible histories, and the act of taking a walk in the city which has for women often been constructed as ‘performance rather than transport’ (ibid.) come together in this women’s history heritage walk through Glasgow’s Merchant City. This blog reflects on a Glasgow Women's Library Heritage Walk taken in June 2023.