Women and the City: Examining the Gender Impact of Violence and Urbanisation

Building on the work of other organisations in the safe cities movement, in 2011 ActionAid piloted work to investigate women’s safety in cities and urban spaces in several countries where it works. This project sought to build upon previous work and to develop new tools and approaches, foster public awareness, and develop practical strategies to enhance women’s urban safety.

The vision that organised the research is the right of women to freedom from violence and the risks to their safety posed by inadequate infrastructure, services and poorly planned or managed urban spaces. The research explores the ways violence and insecurity limit poor women’s mobility and their participation in society. ActionAid’s approach is participatory and human rights-based. Capturing and prioritising women’s experiences offers new information that can be used to strengthen decisions made about safety and mobility.

Women fear and experience violence that falls in two main dimensions: violence against women and violence arising from urban insecurities, particularly as related to urbanisation and poverty. Women may experience these two types of violence simultaneously. For example, a woman may experience rape by someone she knows (gender-based violence), have it discounted or rationalised (another form of gender-based violence), and then struggle with inadequate services as she seeks legal recourse and access to a health service (urban insecurities).

The ActionAid research offers a look into the lives of groups of women whose knowledge and views of their urban realities have previously not been drawn upon to create safer cities. These include women garment workers from urban factory areas in Cambodia, women attending universities in Liberia, and women informal vendors in Ethiopia, to name a few. This report presents findings about women’s safety and mobility in five countries