On September 2nd, the COVID Gender Cluster Kick-off took place under the thopic “Towards a gender-sensitive city”. About 45 participants from Ecuador, India, South Africa, Kenya, Tunisia, Chile, Georgia, Belgium and Germany, among others, participated online in the event. They discussed good practices and challenges in gender-sensitive urban planning and development, gender responsive urban mobility and combating domestic violence. Especially the tremendous engagement of participants and enthusiasm for strengthening gender-sensitive approaches in urban development to mitigate negative impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and contribute to greater gender equality was impressive.
The launch event laid the foundation for the formation of various working groups. In these, new project ideas for gender-sensitive urban development will be drafted in the future in peer-to-peer exchange formats and further developed with the support of regional and international experts.
Programme
A brief overview of this year’s Connective Cities COVID-19 program was followed by an introduction to the topic of gender-sensitive urban development in the (post-) COVID era. The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed and exacerbated existing gender inequalities. This can be seen in all sectors: In public health, in business, and in social life. This has not only short- but also long-term implications for women’s career opportunities. Nevertheless, gender-sensitive practices already exist that can contribute to gender equality. The task now is to implement these practices and help urban actors to achieve sustainable, inclusive and (gender) equitable urban development in the post-COVID era.
Building on this idea, three good practices were presented at the Gender Cluster kick-off. First, Annika Dalén, Gender Equality Officer of the city of Umeå in Sweden, presented the model city for gender-sensitive urban planning and mobility. Umeå has been actively working on gender equality for more than 30 years, both at the political level and in all areas of city administration. Ms. Dalén emphasized the importance of long-term strategies to integrate gender-sensitive approaches in urban planning. In addition, she emphasized that it is essential to collect gender-specific data at the municipal and national level in order to make differences visible, for example in urban mobility as well as in the use of public open spaces, to analyze them and to initiate appropriate changes in urban planning and development.
Following the presentation from Umeå, Sweden, Katja Schülke, Equal Opportunities Officer of the City of Bonn, and Conny Schulte, Manager in the Victim Protection Working Group of the Bonn/Rhein-Sieg District, presented the approaches taken by the City of Bonn to combat domestic violence. In particular, they highlighted the poster campaign of the city of Bonn in the context of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, which served to educate the public and inform women who experience violence about support services. In addition, Conny Schulte reported on the working group for victim protection of the Bonn/Rhein-Sieg district, which includes more than 50 organizations that have set themselves the goal of helping victims of violence of all kinds and, in particular, protecting children from violence. Both speakers emphasized the high demand of the numerous offers, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, and stressed the importance of awareness campaigns.
Finally, Giada Cicognola of Cities Alliance presented the Cities for Women and Femmedina program in Tunis, which aims to rehabilitate and activate public spaces in the historic center of Tunis, the Medina, through an intensive process of participation by women. The project will explore gender-sensitive approaches to urban planning that support women and help city leaders improve participatory and gender-responsive decision-making.
Following the various presentations, an active exchange was facilitated among the participants. As a starting point for the work in the future working groups, the main challenges of the participating cities were collected. In particular, it was highlighted that many cities lack a holistic understanding of the individual situation of different genders on the ground, including cultural, demographic and religious differences. The availability of gender-aggregated data is also limited in many cities. The participating cities will further work on these challenges and develop new project ideas through peer-to-peer learning in the working groups.
Presentations
Umeå – Model city for gender responsive urban planning and mobility
Bonn – Approaches combating domestic violence
Cities Alliance – The Femmedina Project
You can find the recording of the event here: COVID Gender Cluster Kick-off | Connective Cities Network
Outlook: Open call for participation
Join the working groups and benefit from peer-to-peer consultation, international good practices from Vienna, Barcelona and other cities, on-demand international advisory, work on your project idea/challenge and join min. 4 meetings with international peers starting from 30/09/2021:
Gender-sensitive urban planning and development
Gender responsive urban mobility | Connective Cities Network
Urban approaches combating domestic violence
Contact
For further questions please contact Franziska Loibl (franziska.loibl@giz.de).
