AustLit

'Several articles in this issue focus on cities – in particular Melbourne and Sydney, the two largest capitals. That cities may be considered as gendered spaces is Shurlee Swain’s starting point. In both cities, female workers – mistresses of boarding houses, midwives and nurses – made places (‘gynocentric zones’) in which to dispose of ‘the unwanted products of women’s bodies’. Swain’s study ingeniously brings together two databases: about babies born at Melbourne’s Women’s Hospital (compiled by Janet McCalman), and about newspaper advertisements for adoption (compiled by Swain herself). As she shows, by locating their work close to public maternity hospitals, and yet remaining ‘invisible, unacknowledged’, these working women contributed to each city’s aura of ‘respectability’.' (Editorial introduction)