Gender, Sustainable Cities, and Urban Planning: The Challenges Women Face

Similar to many other fields, gender and sustainable cities are strongly interlinked. However, urban planning has remained a male-dominated field. According to an estimate, women hold only 10% of the highest ranking jobs at the world’s leading architecture firms.

Things are now gradually changing, as gender responsive approaches are gaining attention. Women are now actively taking part in the designing of cities, ensuring sustainability, inclusivity, and resilience. Moreover, cities designed with gender perspectives tend to have better public spaces, enhanced mobility, and stronger environmental policies.

This article explores the challenges between gender, sustainable cities, and urban planning. Moreover, these challenges briefly highlight the ripple effect that poor infrastructure has on women’s lives. 

Why Gender Matters in Sustainable Urban Planning

Historically cities have been designed with a “neutral” male-centered perspective. These designs lack the need of women, children, the elderly, and marginalized groups. 

Integrating gender perspectives in the development process of cities ensures equitable and inclusive designs. Such designs help to create safer streets, inclusive public transport, availability of educational and health services, and equitable public spaces.

Lack of women’s participation in city designs results in poorly designed pedestrian, unfriendly street layouts, lack of green spaces, insufficient street lights, and unavailability of transportation and health facilities. 

Additionally, these designs reflect the traditional division of gender roles and gender division of labour. Let’s explore some of the key challenges that women face when urban planning is not focused on gender-inclusive approaches. 

1. Spatial Segregation and Lack of Access 

Cities around the world have been designed in such a way that they reflect the transitional gender roles and gender segregation. The zoning of industrial, commercial, and residential areas reflects the traditional gender divide. 

This segregation puts the burden on women to travel long distances in order to go to work or attain educational opportunities. Moreover, public spaces such as bars, shops, and playgrounds are generally dominated by men. Lack of sanitation in such spaces is another challenge that hinders women’s mobility. 

2. Mobility 

Mobility is another challenge that is associated with gender and sustainable cities. Transportation systems around the world are often designed to accommodate the commuting patterns of men. 

For instance, the transit routes primarily provide transportation services to move workers from residential areas to public realms. These patterns generally do not serve the complex needs of female caregivers, which involve multiple stops to pick and drop off children at schools, do groceries, or get medical care. 

Even though women are more likely to use public transportation because they are less likely to have access to cars. Still, there needs are not considered in transportation routes and timetables. 

3. Safety and Freedom from Violence 

Despite the spatial segregation, women often feel insecure when going to public spaces because of the high risk of gender base violence (GBV). Women face street harassment and violence due to reasons that are related to poorly designed and developed infrastructure. 

Poor lighting, enclosed spaces, deserted areas, and overcrowded transit facilitate violence and discourage women from moving freely. Such infrastructure acts as a barrier and forces women and girls to change their transportation routes in order to avoid harassment. 

These factors play a significant role in women being late from work, to change their jobs or educational institutes, or even to move to another neighbourhood.

4. Health and Hygiene

Urban planning in general is not gender responsive. The infrastructure limits women’s access to public spaces because there are no proper health and hygiene facilities. 

For example, the infrastructure around parks lacks sufficient sanitary facilities. Lack of facilities discourages women from participating in physical exercises. Use of these public spaces are linked with “increased happiness and wellbeing, and longer lifespans.”

Moreover, an individual’s living conditions impact their mental health and wellbeing. Since females face restrictions in many ways because of poorly designed cities, they face mental disorders that limit their development opportunities. 

5. Educational and Economic Barriers

The challenges associated with gender and sustainable cities not only limit the mobility of women, but the consequences have a ripple effect. Women and girls usually face difficulties traveling alone to their desired destination. 

Sometimes they have to pay more money to take safer routes. Longer routes and high travelling costs might force them to choose lower-level jobs or lower-quality universities over higher-rated programs.

On the one hand, these barriers make it difficult for girls to pursue education opportunities. On the other hand, women face hurdles in finding jobs. Hence, lack of sustainable cities reduces the probability of women’s education and participation in the labor force.

6. Social Freedom

Lack of sustainable cities disproportionately affects the lives of women. Barriers in mobility, education, and employment opportunities, as well as access to public places, reduce social freedom for women.

They face difficulty in building social networks on which they can rely to cope with risk, stress, and shock. Poor infrastructure is yet another way that oppresses women and promotes gender inequality in several ways.

Conclusion

A gender-inclusive approach ensures urban design considers inclusivity. It is crucial to understand that sustainable cities and gender equality go hand in hand and women play a vital role in building sustainable cities.

Women-led urban policies often focus on environmental sustainability, efficient infrastructure, public spaces, and public transportation. Research suggests that women in leadership push for policies that reduce carbon footprints while improving urban livability.

By integrating gender perspectives into urban planning, we can create cities that are greener, safer, and more inclusive for all. The future of eco-friendly urban development depends on gender equality.