Female entrepreneurship and the care of places: towards a map of gender practices in Naples

Abstract

What kind of initiative is gendered enterprise? Do projects that make art a driver for local development have a gendered relationship with the spaces they manage and the contexts that host them? Starting from these research questions, the article offers a narrative of the action developed to collect experiences and activation practices that in Naples have triggered, through art, processes of redevelopment and/or rethinking and adaptive reuse of architecture and open spaces in marginal contexts of the city. For this in-progress mapping, the ‘rioni’ (districts) Sanità and Forcella were selected as pilot study areas, since their features allow for the experimentation of the survey protocol. In this complex context of the historical city, different kinds of female enterprise, apt to generate practices of care for space and spaces of care, are being explored, outlining the contribution of new feminisms to the city of social inclusion and spatial equity. The interviews with the key actors collected during a field survey performed using a mixed methodology, the comparison with similar experiences and the participation in actions in space turn the spotlight on opportunities, difficulties, unleashed energies and latent resources. The mapping of gender-sensitive culture-led practices aims at shedding light on issues and on networking skills apt to nurture generative and regenerative capacity.