The private sphere is a certain sector of societal life in which an individual enjoys a degree of authority and tradition, unhampered by interventions from governmental, economic or other institutions.
[10][11][12] Although feminist researchers such as V. Spike Peterson have discovered roots of the exclusion of women from the public sphere in ancient Athenian times,[13] a distinct ideology that prescribed separate spheres for women and men emerged during the Industrial Revolution because of the severance of the workplace from places of residence that occurred with the build up of urban centres of work.
[16] At the same time, there was a new valorisation of the personal – of experiential knowledge and the world of the body – as against the (traditional) male preserves of public speech and theory.
[17] All the while, due to the activism of feminists, the public sphere of work, business, politics and ideas were increasingly opened up to female participation.
[21] Deleuze and Guattari saw postmodernism as challenging the traditional split between private and public spheres, producing instead the supersaturated space of immediate presence and media-scrutiny of late capitalism.