In the run-up to Habitat III, there is an urgent need to address gender and just cities. The world is rapidly becoming more urban, and at the same time, profound disparities in gender continue. What opportunities do cities present for women, and how will they be affected by widening wealth gaps? And in return how does gender equality contribute to inclusive, sustainable cities? These question and more were discussed at a recent panel discussion on Gender, Assets, and Just Cities: Transformative Pathways to Habitat III, hosted by the Ford Foundation
For Caroline Moser, editor of Gender, Assets and Just Cities, the key is ‘transformation’. The buzz word is used frequently to describe the changes underway in urban areas, but too often this change leaves gender inequality intact. Within women’s rights, empowerment, which focuses on the individual woman, has given way to ‘gender transformation’, changing structures and power relations. Bringing the urban and gender agendas together, we can see progress on women’s empowerment in housing and education, improving assets for some women. But without social capital and collective action, transformation that will lead to more gender equal and just cities does not occur.
Shahra Razavi from UN Women noted that since Beijing, women’s access to land and housing has improved as property and inheritance laws are reformed. However, with widening gaps in wealth, poor and middle class women may find themselves worse off than before. This risk is not limited to developing countries, but affects women from New York to Tehran. Razavi also noted the progress that has been made in mainstreaming gender concerns on social policy and protection, but it is still rarely considered in issues such as transportation and urban finance. Women’s voices are too rarely heard in the spaces where decisions on the massive financial flows and real estate deal reshaping cities are discussed.
Heading into Quito, GUFP’s Michael Cohen, urged participants to take make urban issues ‘political’ again, and work across silos. With the growing awareness of inequality, it is important to specify ‘inequality between whom.’ And for the co-panelists Sally Roever and Katia Araujo, a truly transformative urban agenda would recognize women not just as a ‘vulnerable group’ but as active contributors to the urban economy, and as protagonists in urban issues.
The Global Urban Futures Project at The New School is continually looking at these issues through the talks and seminars it has hosted in the last year through the generous support of the Ford Foundation.