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This article examines the ways in which lesbians' economic and intimate lives are closely intertwined amid neoliberal development in the urban landscape. Previous research on queer urban life has primarily drawn attention to commodified gay neighbourhoods and other sites for sexual consumption, which are often marketised as part of a liberal and queer-friendly urban landscape, in Euro-American contexts. Such a focus is not adequate, however, to capture the complex interplay between intimacy and commodification in contemporary societies. Drawing upon interviews with 35 lesbians in Beijing, this study shows how the market is experienced by lesbians as a site of queer agency and vulnerability under neoliberalism with Chinese characteristics. The findings reveal 'commodified forms of intimacy', through which lesbians actively engage in the labour market and (queer-targeted) pink market in order to develop their intimate relations. Meanwhile, 'intimatised forms of commodification' illustrate how women's gendered and sexual expressions are closely policed and evaluated in the workplace as a site of both economic production and the reproduction of social norms. Participants were conscious of their vulnerable position as women and lesbians in the marketplace, but they were active in strategising ways to navigate urban landscapes of heteronormativity and gender inequalities. This article helps to develop a deeper understanding of the complicated and contradictory impacts of neoliberalism with Chinese characteristics on queer communities. It contributes to urban sociology and sexuality studies by mapping the multiple connections between commodified relations and intimate relations in the neoliberal city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public sculptures and monuments play an important role in shaping collective memory and personality, as well as reproducing social inequalities. This article examines the female sculptures in the public spaces of Istanbul; It aims to make visible the inequalities in the common use of public space. Sculptures of Istanbul, which ensure the clearest and static transmission of gender inequality, are handled and exemplified as angels, virgins, war hero women, mother statues and female statues with sexuality emphasized. The research will examine how the representation of women in public sculptures and monuments and the message they carry are reproduced every day in public spaces, deepening inequality and affecting the representation of social roles. In this context, 10 sculptures were selected for the study. The 10 female statues discussed in this context not only repeat the message, but also formally and narratively reiterate that the message is unchangeable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The gendered patterning of urban street names as part of the spatial production of broader male-centric memorial landscapes has been documented in a growing body of scholarship. Scholars from various cognate fields, such as cultural geography, gender and memory studies, and urban sociology, have unraveled the stark gender disparities favoring men inscribed into symbolic landscapes through place names, public monuments, and other memorial artefacts. This article sets out to overcome some of the limitations characterizing this strand of research – namely, the lack of statistical sophistication and the preference for case studies based on singular cities – by developing a multi-level modelling of gendered street nomenclature at the national level. The approach developed in this paper employs the complete collection of urban street names in Romania to assess the empirical adequacy of five hypotheses regarding the gendered structuring of the country's urban namescape. This analysis highlights the factors underpinning the variation of gender disparities in terms of Romania's historical regions, ethnic demographics and local ethnopolitics, city ranking within the national territorial administration and intra-urban stratification of the road network, as well as the effects brought about by postsocialist transformations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article proposes an interpretation of changes in patterns of gender inequality in urban China in terms of the specific interrelationships of production and reproduction in Chinese work-units (danwei). The historical background of the structural conditions for gender inequality in pre-revolutionary Chinese society is sketched out, emphasising the lack of institutional separation of household and enterprise. The communist danwei is a multi-functional organisation which combines productive and reproductive functions. This structure has been conducive to the relatively greater gender equality which has been achieved in communist China. The reforms of recent years introduce pressures to separate productive and reproductive functions, which are likely to erode the trends towards greater gender equality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]