This is evidenced, inter alia, by gender-inequitable access to ‘decent’ work and living standards, human capital acquisition, physical and financial assets, personal safety and security, and representation in formal structures of urban governance. Indeed, while at one level the contemporary ‘urban transition’ in the Global South offers scope for advancing gender equality, given the common association of urbanisation with expanded economic, social and political opportunities for women, barriers to female ‘empowerment’ remain widespread, especially among the urban poor and/or those who reside in slums (areas marked by one or more ‘shelter deprivations’ in respect of services, tenure, overcrowding and so on). The present article, which draws substantially on our contributions to the preparation of UN-HABITAT’s (2013) State of Women in Cities 2012/13, sketches out some key parameters of gendered space in an urban future which is likely to be dominated demographically by women, even if social, economic and political gains lag behind. Recognition that space and the built environment are constituted by, as well as constitutive of gender, has long been established in feminist analyses of the city, even if the ‘private’ space of the household has tended to be somewhat neglected in mainstream theory (see Fenster, 2005 Jarvis et al, 2009 Massey, 1994 McDowell, 1999). Gender and urban development are intimately interrelated, and the politics of space are never far from the picture.
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