Women Who Build Cities: Notes and Links

Thank you for taking part in the webinar Women Who Build Cities!

Here are the related notes and links that were discussed and presented during the webinar, as well as links to relevant research and academic and popular literature on the subject. 

Handbook for Gender-Inclusive Urban Planning and Design

'With women occupying just 10 percent of the highest-ranking jobs at the world’s leading architecture firms, cities have historically been planned and designed to reflect traditional gender roles and gendered division of labor. As a result, cities work better for men than they do for women".

World Bank

Women and Planning

• Women and Planning (Part I): An analysis of gender-related barriers to professional advancement  (about barriers faced by women working within the profession).

• Women and Planning (Part II): Creating Gender-Sensitive Urban Environments Post-Covid-19: Challenges and Opportunities (about the impact of the profession on the day-to-day lives of women)

Scientific article in 2 parts by Royal Town Planning Institute, London

Survey of top architecture firms reveals "quite shocking" lack of gender diversity at senior levels

"Just three of the world's 100 biggest architecture firms are headed by women and only two have management teams that are more than 50 per cent female"

Dezeen

Evaluation of Civil Engineering Programs at Swedish Universi­­ties and Institutions of Higher Education
"The percentage of women of students who begin a civil engineering program has decreased. This is not only a matter of recruitment, but also of teaching methods and educational culture"

Högskolverket - Swedish Higher Education Authority

The Gender Dimension of the Transport Workforce
"In 2018, females represented less than 20% of the global transport workforce (ILO, 2019b). Within the European Union (EU), in the same year, the average female participation rate in the transport-related workforce was 22%. <...> While women do participate in the transport workforce, relatively
few women rise to managerial positions. "

ITF – International Transport Forum by OECD

Transport is Not Gender-Neutral 
"Female participation in the transport sector—as operators, drivers, engineers, and leaders—remains low. According to Harvard Business Review, “women make up 20% of engineering graduates, but nearly 40% of them either quit or never enter the profession.” As a result, the transport industry remains heavily male-dominated, which only makes it harder for women service users to make themselves heard, and limits incentives for the sector to become more inclusive."

World Bank Blogs

Urban Planning Has a Sexism Problem
An article touching the topic from the angle of lack of female representation as authors of official city development documents, bestseller books on urban planning, amount of female panelists and keynotes at planning conferences –

Next City News Agency

City with a female face: how modern Vienna was shaped by women

Vienna has been pioneering ‘gender mainstreaming’ for nearly 30 years. How did the city come to be so far ahead – and could its gains be lost?

The Guardian

Feminist City: Claiming Space in a Man-Made World 

Feminist City by Leslie Kern examines how urban design has turned more than half the population into second-class citizens.

Verso