ABSTRACT

With more than half the world’s population now living in urban areas, urbanisation is undoubtedly one of the most important phenomena of the 21st century. However, despite increasing recognition of the critical relationship between economic and social development in cities, gender issues are often overlooked in understanding the complexities of current urbanisation processes. This book seeks to rectify this neglect.

Gender, Asset Accumulation and Just Cities explores the contribution that a focus on the gendered nature of asset accumulation brings to the goal of achieving just, more equitable cities. To date neither the academic debates nor the formulated policy and practice on just cities has included a focus on gender-based inequalities, discriminations, or opportunities. From a gender perspective, a separate discourse exists, closely associated with gender justice, particularly in relation to urban rights and democracy. Neither, however, has addressed the implications for women’s accumulation of assets and associated empowerment for transformational pathways to just cities.

In this book, contributors specifically focus on gender and just cities from a wide range of gendered perspectives that include households, housing, land, gender-based violence, transport, climate, and disasters.

chapter 1|20 pages

Introduction

Towards a nexus linking gender, assets, and transformational pathways to just cities

chapter 2|19 pages

Female household headship as an asset?

Interrogating the intersections of urbanisation, gender, and domestic transformations

chapter 4|20 pages

Key drivers of asset erosion and accumulation in informal employment

Findings from the Informal Economy Monitoring Study

chapter 6|17 pages

The gendered contradictions in South Africa's state housing

Accumulation alongside an undermining of assets through housing

chapter 7|18 pages

‘The devil is in the detail'

Understanding how housing assets contribute to gender-just cities

chapter 8|15 pages

Routes to the just city

Towards gender equality in transport planning

chapter 9|14 pages

Gender-based violence and assets in just cities

Triggers and transformation

chapter 11|16 pages

Challenging stereotypes about gendered vulnerability to climate change

Asset adaptation in Mombasa and Cartagena