Cities, Slums and Gender in the Global South

Towards a feminised urban future

Sylvia Chant, Cathy McIlwaine

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317950363
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

Developing regions are set to account for the vast majority of future urban growth, and women and girls will become the majority inhabitants of these locations in the Global South. This is one of the first books to detail the challenges facing poorer segments of the female population who commonly reside in 'slums'. It explores the variegated disadvantages of urban poverty and slum-dwelling from a gender perspective.

This book revolves around conceptualisation of the 'gender-urban-slum interface' which explains key elements to understanding women's experiences in slum environments. It has a specific focus on the ways in which gender inequalities are can be entrenched but also alleviated. Included is a review of the demographic factors which are increasingly making cities everywhere 'feminised spaces', such as increased rural-urban migration among women, demographic ageing, and rising proportions of female-headed households in urban areas. Discussions focus in particular on education, paid and unpaid work, access to land, property and urban services, violence, intra-urban mobility, and political participation and representation.

This book will be of use to researchers and professionals concerned with gender and development, urbanisation and rural-urban migration.

1
Introduction

Cities and slums in the Global South – the importance of gender

Introduction

It is well known that over half the global population is now urban, and that despite some exceptions, mainly in sub-Saharan Africa (see Fox, 2011; Potts, 2012a, 2012b; Satterthwaite, 2010), the trend to greater concentration of people in towns and cities is likely to continue as the twenty-first century wears on. By 2030, for example, an anticipated two-thirds or more of the world’s inhabitants will be urban, with the vast bulk of future growth accounted for by developing areas (UN-DESA, 2014a:1; UN-Habitat, 2012a:ix; see also Jones et al., 2014; McGranahan and Satterthwaite, 2014).

What is perhaps less well known is that women will be the majority of urban citizens in the coming decades. This is partly due to increasing levels of female rural–urban migration (especially in regions where men have traditionally dominated population movements), and partly a result of demographic ageing – across the world women generally outlive their male counterparts, and many of these women are urban-based (see Chant, 2013; Chant and Datu, 2011a, 2011b, 2015; Kinyanjui, 2014; Tacoli, 2012). What is also suggested by current trajectories, particularly in Latin America but elsewhere too, is that greater proportions of urban dwellers will live in female-headed households. Global demographics are changing, and rapidly: a ‘feminised urban future’ beckons in which the women’s share of city populations will be larger than that of men. Given the notion that urbanisation comprises the power to transform societies (see UN-Habitat, 2014a), and that through situating themselves in urban areas, ‘(w)omen in particular believe that they can improve their status, position, and their children’s opportunities’ (Meleis, 2011:1), is it possible that past and projected demographic change may add momentum to struggles for greater gender equality?

Certainly, a historic association of urbanisation with possibilities for ‘female emancipation’ (primarily on account of the ‘breakdown’ of patriarchal family systems and landholding, and greater opportunities for female education and economic autonomy) makes it tempting to think of the ‘urban century’ as offering prospects for narrowing gender disparities and injustices on an unprecedented scale. As UN-Habitat (2010c:3) contends: ‘it is … in cities that societal progress such as the advancement of women and increasing levels of gender equality take place’.

Recognising that in some contexts gender divisions, along with various restrictions on women, may be more pronounced in urban than in rural settings (see Schütte, 2014, on Afghanistan), cities generally seem to offer women scope to escape some of demands on their time and labour associated with domesticity and subsistence provision in rural environments (see Bibler and Zuckerman, 2013; also Chant, 1996; Lees, 2004; McDowell, 1999). The particular characteristics of urban employment, such as greater possibilities for remuneration in women’s own right and a broader range of occupational choices, also tend to be associated with some important shifts in women’s independence and self-development (see Bradshaw, 2013b; Evans, 2013a, 2013b). Compounding these processes, evidence suggests that young male urban dwellers, especially those with exposure to secondary education, ‘hold more equitable views than older men’ (Barker, 2014:86). Indeed, as further noted by Barker, ‘Given that the world is becoming more urban, and that young people in much of the world are staying in school for longer, young men are being pushed – or increasingly socialised – towards accepting gender equality’ (ibid.; see also Plan International, 2011).

This said, the difficulties experienced by urban women vis-à-vis their rural counterparts may not be that dissimilar, especially where the former are poor and/or reside in slums. As pointed out by Cecilia Tacoli and David Satterthwaite (2013:3), while urbanisation is often associated with greater independence among women as a result of better access to services and employment, lower fertility rates, and a degree of relaxation of patriarchal norms within and beyond the family, ‘most urban women experience profound disadvantages compared to men in their daily lives’ (see also Chant and McIlwaine, 2013b; Muñoz-Boudet et al., 2012:37; Tacoli, 2014:1). As additionally emphasised by Afaf Ibrahim Meleis (2011:5): ‘Urbanisation creates physical demands on women due to new waged work, urban stressors, limited convenient transportation, demands on their time, and new complexities in their lives.’ These pressures conceivably weigh heaviest on female migrants to urban areas who may lack support networks and face social stigma alongside isolation (see Messias, 2011:156–7; also Lenoël, 2014; Tacoli et al., 2015:25–6). This resonates for women migrants who originate internally from rural areas as well as those who have moved internationally between cities in other countries of the Global South (Bastia and Busse, 2011), or indeed to Global North cities (Wills et al., 2010; see also Parnell and Robinson, 2012).

However, perhaps even more important than migrant status is where women live in cities. Generally speaking, women who are poorer (in income terms), and who reside in disadvantaged or marginalised urban communities (particularly ‘slums’) are those who are usually most at risk of the worst excesses of socio-economic and gender inequality. As part of its assessment of the Beijing Platform for Action+20 in 2015, for example, UN Women (2015a:9) has drawn attention to the fact that while urbanisation has helped to present new possibilities for gender equality, there are major challenges too, not least on account of the growth of informal settlements which produce ‘new kinds of urban spaces marked by destitution and insecurity on a vast scale’. Indeed, given that cities seem to be associated with mounting social, political and economic inequality within their boundaries as well as in relation to rural areas, not to mention beyond borders to other cities globally, gender divisions and disparities persist, and in some instances are reconstituted or exacerbated. This is arguably one reason why neither quantitative nor qualitative data reveal any systematic relationship between the ‘feminisation’ of urban populations and substantially narrowed gender gaps in such arenas as education, employment, earnings, assets, health, vulnerability to violence, and political voice and representation (see below). This also explains why consideration of intra-urban heterogeneity and slums from a gender perspective constitutes a core element in our book, and is the basis of a framework which we have denominated the ‘gender–urban–slum interface’.

In the ‘gender–urban–slum interface’, on which we expound in detail in Chapter 2, we identify a broad series of territorial and thematic domains through which gender disparities in cities can be most fruitfully approached and addressed. Among many influences, this draws inspiration from Caren Levy’s (1996) model of a ‘web of institutionalisation’, which recognises the interplay of different elements and ‘sites of power’ in the framing, evolution and integration of gender in policy and planning.

We hope that this contribution will not only be empirically, methodologically and analytically useful for Global South cities per se, but also assist in the vital task of (re)theorising urbanisation and urban dynamics from a non-Northern vantage point (see Robinson, 2002, 2003, 2006; see also Myers, 2011; Parnell et al., 2009; Parnell and Robinson, 2012; Vira and James, 2011; Williams et al., 2009). In the interests of better informing what Ananya Roy (2009:820) has termed ‘new geographies of urban theory’, gender is paramount notwithstanding its comparative, not to mention notable, neglect in Global South city-making processes to date. As emphasised by Linda Peake and Martina Rieker (2013:2): ‘[W]omen are an important node in the constellations of power, and thus in the production of centre and margins, in imaginaries of the urban’.

Despite an already extensive, and burgeoning, literature on gender and cities, the main focus has been on advanced economies where many conditions and theoretical constructions are not easily mapped on to developing countries (Peake and Rieker, 2013). This is not to deny that in an ever more globalised world some fundamental gendered cleavages – especially in terms of the position of women in relation to men – do travel, and are arguably disturbingly widespread. These include the fact that cities are overwhelmingly designed by men, and for men, that women are often rendered less mobile than men in urban environments, that they are more vulnerable to violence, and that in general terms women are disadvantaged by gender roles and relations – economically, physiologically, psychologically, socially, sexually and politically. As summarised by the UK’s Gender and Development Network: ‘Gender is a universal structural inequality which affects all peoples in all countries and is not confined to developing countries alone’ (GADN, 2013:24). In addition, the socio-economic processes underpinning the growth of cities in the Global North and Global South are increasingly intertwined, especially in relation to international migration. Not only do cities of the Global North often depend on the cheap labour of migrants from poorer countries, and invariably from developing nations (Wills et al., 2010), but movement between cities of the South and North leads to complex changes in gender ideologies (McIlwaine, 2010).

This said, there is a real need to focus on the Global South in its own right, especially given that this is where the vast bulk of current and future urban growth is occurring. Here, we wish not only to rectify a tendency for debates around inclusive or transformative cities either to neglect gender altogether or to focus on only one or two aspects of women’s experiences, such as violence (see Shrestha et al., 2015; Whitzman et al., 2013), but also to broaden our knowledge and appreciation of gender in relation to intra-urban heterogeneity by considering the socio-spatial significance of residence, especially as this pertains to slums (see also Peake and Rieker, 2013:13).

While not wishing to make a case for invidious comparisons between North and South, nor to suggest that urban women in developing countries are necessarily worse off than many of their counterparts in advanced economies (Peake and Rieker, 2013), we take on board UN-Habitat’s (2012a:45) assertion that the ‘everyday lives’ of women and men in developing and developed countries differ to a substantial degree, and contend that treating women in the urban world as a homogeneous group is inappropriate.

Urban women in the Global South, especially those who reside in slums, are more likely than their Northern counterparts to suffer greater levels of extreme and relative monetary poverty, iniquitous unpaid labour burdens stemming from poorly consolidated shelter and absent or deficient urban services and infrastructure, sorely limited access to salaried employment, lack of welfare benefits, lack of protection from gender-sensitive legislation, and inability to seek the support of institutions in asserting claims, rights and justice, even where these are formally mandated. For some groups of female urban dwellers in the Global South, the intersecting vulnerabilities occasioned by such factors as age, conjugal and family status, and sexuality may render them largely powerless to carve out any kind of meaningful existence for themselves and their households.

In light of this, and in the interests of enriching and broadening current debates on gender in the city, we attempt in the present volume to sketch out an anatomy of ‘where we are now’ in terms of women in cities and slums of the Global South, and ‘what of the future’ in respect of how women might be better enabled to act by, and for, themselves, in shaping more gender-equitable urban environments in which they will be the majority stakeholders. We envisage a struggle in light of existing challenges, but hope to offer some pointers towards rendering cities spaces of equal rights, and a vanguard for creating possibilities for women and men of all generations to enjoy and benefit equally from the positive aspects of urbanisation – economic, political and social – at all levels.

While our dedicated introduction to core components in the ‘gender–urban–slum interface’ is reserved for Chapter 2, in order to establish context we provide brief background below to the term ‘slum’, how slums are defined and measured, and more detailed justification as to why consideration of this space is particularly relevant to poor women in cities of the South.

Introducing ‘slums’

‘Slum’ terminology has only (re)entered the...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of plates
• List of tables
• List of boxes
• Foreword
• Preface and acknowledgements
• List of abbreviations
• 1 Introduction: cities and slums in the Global South – the importance of gender
• 2 Analysing gender in cities of the South: introducing the ‘gender–urban–slum interface’
• 3 Gendered access to land and housing in cities and slums
• 4 Gender and services in cities and slums
• 5 Gender and health: an urban penalty for slum-dwelling women?
• 6 Gender-based violence in cities and slums
• 7 Gender, mobility and connectivity
• 8 Gender and urban productivity: education, employment and entrepreneurship
• 9 Gender, urban politics and governance
• 10 Conclusion: creating more gender-equitable cities
• Bibliography
• Index