ABSTRACT
Multiple approaches to engendering safer and more inclusive urban spaces for women now exist, with city governments, planners and urban citizens across the world advocating for and adopting initiatives to create new urban paradigms where urban spaces are inclusive of the diverse needs and aspirations of all citizens. The importance of gender-specific approaches to urban spaces has evolved from a dominant and problematic approach to urban safety that has historically left women’s needs off local and international agendas. Intersectionality is one methodological and theoretical approach that addresses the shortfalls of gender mainstreaming by explicitly addressing the many different needs of women. Intersectionality offers a framework for considering gender as part of a complex and dynamic series of social divisions, identities and structures that shape individuals’ singular and collective experiences. In an attempt to locate and work with simplicity, it would be easy to see intersectionality as a framework that invokes a simple addition of aspects of identity.
