Engendering urban planning in different contexts – successes,constraints and consequences

Cities are rapidly transforming into complex places which traditional approaches to urban planning have difficulties to deal with. The new EU- and UN-urban agendas still lack gender-awareness concerning the supportive infrastructure of everyday life that enhances the opportunities for both women and men with different backgrounds and orientations to muddle through in the complex daily contexts. I argue that, in addition to mainstreaming gender equality as a top-down endeavour, there is a need for an expansion of engendering urban planning, which requires different ways of dealing with varying types of planning from the gender perspective. The aim of the article is to present and discuss the results of an explorative study with qualitative methods which has tested with examples a framework for engendering urban planning in different contexts. These are (1) Gender mainstreaming comprehensive urban planning (Vienna); (2) Gender-sensitive advocacy planning (Barcelona); (3) Gender+ self-organizing around urban planning & development (Helsinki); (4) Gender-aware co-governance with public, private, people-partnerships (Athens). The results corroborate the argument but lead to a new one concerning the engendering of new approaches, such as Expanded urban planning that might alleviate dealing with complexities.     

Reexamining transport poverty,job access,and gender issues in Central and Eastern Europe

Tirana, the Balkan capital examined in this study, displays patterns of gendered job search behavior and access, which are unique within contemporary Europe and even within post-socialist Central and Eastern Europe. Here, it is a rather spatially constricted job search range rather than transport poverty that prevents women living in first-ring suburbs from attaining satisfactory employment. Female commutes are extraordinarily short and most often on foot. While the city now has nearly one million inhabitants and a high car ownership rate, and is located in Europe, the employment and mobility choices and behaviors of its female residents resemble those in developing rather than developed countries, and in small rather than large cities. The reasons underpinning this situation have more to do with socio-cultural gender barriers and less with transport poverty or labor market weaknesses. This finding might apply to other Balkan capitals or cities outside Europe, which have recently experienced large waves of internal migration and where both existing residents and newcomers have not yet adjusted to ‘big city’ life.     

Wandering intellectuals: establishing a research agenda on gender,walking, and thinking

Building on a study of three women who practice walking-for-thinking as a part of their intellectual work, the analysis identifies potential themes for a future research agenda on gender, walking, and thinking. A particular focus is the subtle, daily, management of gendered expectations and ways in which walking, for these women, is a contribution to such management. We name this ‘walking away from expectations’ and identify three themes: walking away from others’ gaze, walking away from restlessness and domestic responsibility, and walking away as belonging. Walking emerges as a skilful way of creating the conditions to do one’s intellectual work and manage gendered expectations. Further, the meanings of silences about gender in the context of intellectual work and walking is discussed and questions for future research agenda are suggested.     

Homelessness,nature, and health: toward a feminist political ecology of masculinities

Engaging with feminist political ecology and leveraging experiences from a 16-month critical ethnography, this research explores ways in which masculinities served as both a rationale and an outcome of men facing homelessness living in the margins of an urban municipal public park – a space known as ‘the Hillside.’ Ethnographic narratives point to Hillside residents making their home in nature, connecting experiences in nature with various masculinities, and the gendered eschewing of social services. These portrayals further highlight the perceived feminization of social services within a context of rapidly neoliberalizing urban environments, and illustrate the ways participants positioned and engaged with social services. Entanglements of health and nonhuman nature prompt a feminist political ecological engagement with masculinity. Experiences from the Hillside add textured richness to discourses concerning the ways in which contemporary landscapes are constructed, perceived, experienced, and co-constituted through and with gender.     

Unfolding various academic mobility experiences of Southeast Asian women

This article draws on data from a qualitative research study undertaken with the main aim of investigating the issue of the gender dimension of the academic mobility of Southeast Asian women. Our research describes Southeast Asian women’s experiences of mobility, narrating why they choose to be mobile, how the experience of going abroad was responded to and/or rejected by their family, how they experienced life in a different country, and what evaluations they make about these experiences in personal, familial, and professional terms. The article stresses the need to improve the understanding of the factors that are still determining the chances of women to be mobile and obtain fruitful gains from these experiences. For this to be attained, the article follows through an intersectional approach to mobility, considering it is of much use as it allows to comprehend that the disadvantages associated with gender are cumulative, multi-layered, resulting from effects of several variables, including of the emotional, social, economic, and political contexts.     

Urban homesteading and intensive mothering: (re) gendering care and environmental responsibility in Boston and Chicago

In this article, we explore how normative ideologies of good mothering are being reproduced and contested through urban homesteading, a sustainable lifestyle that emphasizes household self-provisioning. Urban homesteading practices may include gardening and urban agriculture, canning, and pickling, and a variety of do-it-yourself and craft projects. Based on qualitative research with 19 urban homesteading households with children in the Boston and Chicago Metropolitan areas, we argue that urban homesteading discourses and practices reflect and align with intensive mothering ideologies in the United States. Intensive mothering ideologies encourage a selfless devotion of physical, emotional, and mental energy to childrearing, and are often associated with individualized, privileged, and gendered subjectivities. We find these intensive mothering ideologies especially visible in the ways that mothers perceive and respond to environmental risk by adopting and enacting urban homesteading labors. We also note that the choice to respond to risk by homesteading is often, but not always, mediated and animated by economic, temporal, and social privilege. In this way, urban homesteading and surrounding discourses may inadvertently raise the bar of ‘good’ motherhood in ways that demand more of women and marginalize or burden mothers with less resources and privilege. However, rather than dismiss homesteading entirely on these grounds, we suggest that it may be possible to harvest impulses of care, connection, and collectivity associated with homesteading in ways that benefit rather than burden all mothers.     

The role of gender norms in access to agricultural training in Chikwawa and Phalombe,Malawi

Based on qualitative research conducted in Chikwawa and Phalombe in Malawi, this article discusses how gender relations shape men and women’s access to and participation in agricultural training. It also examines how men and women justify or challenge gender inequalities in relation to access to agricultural information and knowledge. Data on gender and recruitment to and participation in training, barriers to training and access to information as well as farmer to farmer extension models were collected and analysed. A gender relations approach, focusing on power and inequality, was used to analyse the data. The data shows that the perception of men as household heads and women as carers or helpers who are also illiterate and ignorant often has implications on women’s ability to access training and information. Negative stereotypical perceptions about women by their husbands and extension workers militate against women’s access to training and information. Institutional biases within extension systems reproduce gender inequality by reinforcing stereotypical gender norms. Extension officers should be targeted with training on gender responsive adult learning methodologies and gender awareness to help them be more inclusive and sensitive to women’s needs.     

Femininity,mobility and family fears: Indian international student migration and transnational parental control

In this paper, I explore the migration of Indian-trained nurses enrolled in a post-graduate critical/geriatric care programme at a Canadian public college. Calling upon recent literature on gender, modernity and mobility in India, I examine the extent to which skilled transnational migration is shaped by gender relations established in India. While feminized international migration suggests increased autonomy of female migrants, this research highlights two important dimensions of such migration. The first is that family migration strategies are major determinants of the occupational choice and migration processes that daughters engage in, and the second is that the moral subjectivity of daughters is maintained through transnational methods of care and control.     

Gendering boundary work: exploring excluded spaces in supermarket job rotation

The article explores the establishment of gendering divides in organisations by bridging Hernes' (2004) typologies of physical, social and mental boundary work with notions on the practice of gender as negotiated in everyday organisational activities. In the investigated Swedish supermarket, the pre-store, a narrow, front-stage space in which only women worked, was excluded from the job rotation that otherwise dominated the organisation of work in the store. This study examines: (1) how and on what grounds the divides of the pre-store were established in the supermarket and (2) how spatial divides were incorporated into the practice of gender and work in the supermarket. The findings suggest that the divides that are visible through the exclusion of the pre-store from the job rotation involved not only the allocation of work and space but also multiple and complex physical, social and mental spatial negotiations undertaken by both employees and managers. Together, these factors neutralised the divides as an aspect of the activities. First, the notion that gender was irrelevant for organisational decisions makes gender a non-issue for the organisation of the pre-store activities. Second, the notion that women and men are essentially different provided a ground for explaining why, despite being an organisational non-issue, work and workers were in fact organised along gendered lines in the supermarket. The study contributes with qualitative insights regarding the micro-political practices that make gender into a neutralised non-issue in organisations and, in particular, the intertwinement of spatial practices and negotiations.     

Gender,empowerment, and cultural preservation at Topu Honis Shelter Home,Timor-Leste

Women's empowerment, the ability of a woman to make her own decisions and shape her own life, is a common goal for nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) operating under the gender and development framework. This article examines the way that one NGO, Topu Honis Shelter Home, in Oecussi, Timor-Leste, facilitates the empowerment of its young women members and challenges gender norms in a patriarchal society. In doing six months of participant observation research at Topu Honis and semi-structured interviews, I discerned four sources of empowerment, which are explored in this article: (1) gender equality, (2) education, (3) agency and confidence, and (4) cultural preservation. The primary finding of this research is the suggestion that cultural preservation can be an important resource for empowering women, even in a patriarchal society. At first glance, this may run counter to the dominant western notions of empowerment, but in the case of Topu Honis, key cultural practices are preserved while oppressive gender norms are simultaneously dis-embedded. Development practitioners should explore how preserving and promoting local cultural practices may contribute to development and/or empowerment.