Cross-Cutting Theme: Gender
This research was funded as part of the Urban Africa: Risk Knowledge programme
Abstract
This theme focuses on gender relations in urban risk and knowledge. Gender relations are defined as the ‘socially constructed relationship between women and men, in which women have been systematically subordinated
Gender relations are reinforced and reproduced in the interaction between social structure and individual and collective agency of diverse women and men, girls and boys. In the urban context, this agency makes up a range of urban practices which comprise the activities of individual household members; collective action by civil society groups; the activities of the private sector, and the policies, planning and management activities of the state. Very often actions that discriminate against girls and women (or against boys and men) go unrecognised, they have been normalised into culture and are perceive as something ‘natural’ that partly defines being a women or girl. This means that gender work has to focus not only on discrimination that is politically identified and recognised by society, for example, in equality legislation, but also that which is invisible or seen as ‘natural’ by society but nonetheless results in unequal life chances and wellbeing.
This is an output from the Urban Africa: Risk Knowledge (Urban ARK) programme
Citation
Levy, C., ‘Thematic note: Cross-Cutting Theme: Gender.