Abstract Is the importance of women on the High Street being overlooked? Debate around the current state of town centres has been intense. The demise of household names such as Woolworths and BHS has led to deep concern as to whether it is reconfiguring, or imploding. There is a lot at stake as town centres generate great social and economic value. A range of stakeholders are working to identify the drivers behind the instability in order to subvert the decline. Online shopping is highlighted as the greatest threat in an array of others, including taxation, high retail rents, inflexible leases, fragmented ownership, out-of-town centres, and poor infrastructure and built environments. Policy discussion and development target these areas. Little attention is paid to the most important factor, the consumer. Women undertake or influence up to 80% of purchases, they are the main consumer. If footfall is down in town centres, this must be due to changes in their shopping habits. Focusing on women in the London Boroughs of Lewisham and Bromley, the aim was to test whether the evolving role of women is the foundation for changing shopping habits and, ultimately, town centre woes. Looking through the prism of feminist geography, the home, work, leisure and shopping spaces that women inhabit, and mobility between these, were analysed. It was found that women’s roles and attitudes across all age ranges are changing and their shopping behaviour reflects this, with wide ranging policy implications.

In The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jane Jacobs proposed four conditions for generating and maintaining vibrant urban diversity (mixed uses, short blocks, aged buildings, and sufficient density), but subsequent empirical work to test them has been limited. This study responds by studying town and city centres in Great Britain in the wake of coronavirusinduced restrictions to answer the question: can Jane Jacobs’ four rules for generating urban diversity help explain why some High Streets in Britain have demonstrated more resilience than others?