Deconstructing the trajectories of gendered mobility in Cairo : lessons for urban policy

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Deconstructing

the trajectories

of gendered mobility

in Cairo: lessons for urban policy

Thesis by: Lamia Abdelfattah

Student ID: 869620

Supervisor: Prof. Carolina Pacchi

Academic Year: 2017-2018

Politecnico Di Milano

School of Architecture, Urban Planning and Construction Engineering

Master of Science in Urban Planning & Policy Design

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Abstract (in English)

Women’s presence in the public space is systematically accompanied by a rooted fear of gender-based violence and internalized expectations of sexual harassment. However, to reduce the struggle to navigate the public sphere to a fear of violence, and again to reduce these fears to a primitive conception, restricts capacities to engage with the problem in a constructive and transformative way. In this exploratory research, I argue that systemic violence is part of a wider arena of gendered prejudice that runs into all systems of governance and recreates a myriad of gendered impositions into the urban system as a whole.

In essence, I focus on the element of mobility and how the urban environment in Cairo

contributes to the formation of its gendered nature. I argue that gendered experiences in public space that impinge on the rights to equal mobility are not simply the result of social interaction removed from spatial form. Rather, gender relations and space are mutually constitutive entities and should be addressed as such. In that sense, the complex socio-spatial processes that result are as much a concern to the urban planner and policymaker, as they are to the social sciences and public policy.

To that end, the research aims to highlight ways by which urban planning decisions impinge on women’s rights to equal mobility in Cairo. On a second level, it explores the conditions,

potentials and limitations of gender-oriented urban policy as revealed through approaches adopted in the transport sector. To meet these objectives, the research follows a qualitative and exploratory approach, combining methods of content analysis, historical and ethnographic analysis, case study investigation and key informant interviews.

In sum, the research argues that a reconceptualization of gender relations in space is essential to a critical address of gendered mobility in the public sphere. It also offers that gender

differences in spatial experiences must become a central component in urban planning decisions in order to actively reshape women’s experiences of -and access to- public space along equal lines. And finally, the research suggests that address of gender-based needs in urban policy is weak, tokenistic and lacks a critical engagement with women’s needs, values and their rights to safe integration in the public sphere.

Keywords

Female mobility, gendered mobility, feminist urbanism, feminist urban studies, gendered urban policy, gender-based violence, women-only transport, rights to public space

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Abstract (in Italian)

Nel momento in cui una donna si trova in uno spazio pubblico, le sue emozioni sono contraddistinte da una radicata paura di essere vittime di violenza di genere e da una

interiorizzata aspettativa di ricevere molestie sessuali. Un approccio superficiale ridurrebbe la questione alla paura della violenza della donna, ignorando le implicazioni che questa situazione ha nel libero accesso delle donne alla sfera pubblica. Tuttavia, se si vuole affrontare la questione in modo costruttivo e trasformativo è necessario indagare la questione nella sua complessità, domandandosi come questa si genera.

Questo studio conoscitivo sostiene che la sistemica violenza a cui sono esposte le donne è parte di un più ampio sistema di pregiudizi di genere che, fortemente presente nella struttura

governativa, si manifesta in tutto il contesto urbano con miriadi di imposizioni basate sul genere. La ricerca si focalizza sulla mobilità della città del Cairo e su come il suo contesto urbano

contribuisce alla formazione della sua natura sessualmente discriminatoria. La disparità

nell’esperire lo spazio pubblico a seconda del genere di appartenenza non è il semplicemente il risultato di una interazione sociale priva di legami con lo spazio; al contrario, le relazioni di genere e lo spazio sono strettamente interconnessi e per questo bisognerebbe analizzarli tenendo in considerazione il loro reciproco legame. In questo senso, il complesso processo socio-spaziale che ne consegue interessa tanto la pianificazione e le politiche urbane, quanto le scienze sociali e le politiche pubbliche in generale.

A questo fine, la ricerca evidenzia i modi in cui le decisioni urbanistiche ledono il diritto delle donne ad avere la medesima mobilità degli uomini nella città del Cairo; a un secondo livello, esplora le condizioni, i potenziali e le limitazioni delle politiche urbane basate sulle distinzioni di genere come dimostrato attraverso l’analisi degli approcci adottati nel settore del trasporto pubblico. Al fine di analizzare questi temi, la tesi ha adottato un approccio descrittivo, qualitativo ed esplorativo, combinando lo studio di documenti ad analisi storiche ed etnografiche,

comparando la situazione del Cairo con contesti analoghi e svolgendo interviste ad attori chiave. In sintesi, la tesi sostiene che una riconcettualizzazione spaziale delle relazioni di genere è necessaria per affrontare in modo critico la mobilità di genere nella sfera pubblica. Inoltre, suggerisce che le differenze di genere nell’esperire lo spazio debbano diventare una

componente centrale nelle decisioni urbanistiche affinché l’esperienza e l’accesso delle donne alla sfera pubblica possa corrispondere al principio dell’equa mobilità. Infine, la ricerca evidenzia come nelle politiche urbane ci sia una scarsa sensibilità alle questioni di genere e quando c’è un’attenzione al tema questa è superficiale, priva di una significativa considerazione del punto di vista femminile e del diritto delle donne a una sicura inclusione nella sfera pubblica.

Parole chiave

Mobilità delle donne, mobilità di genere, urbanesimo femminista, studi urbani femministi, politiche urbane di genere, violenza di genere, diritto di accesso alla sfera pubblica

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Acronyms

APTA – Alexandria Passenger Transport Authority

BRT – Bus Rapid Transit system

CAPMAS – Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics

CODATU -- Cooperation for Urban Mobility in the Developing World

CTA – Cairo Transport Authority

CEDAW – Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (UN entity)

DfT – Department for Transport (UK)

EBRD – European Bank for Reconstruction and Development

ECGBV – Economic Cost of Gender-Based Violence (study)

ECM – Egyptian Company for Metro Operation and Maintenance

ECWR – Egyptian Centre for Women’s Rights

ENIT – Egyptian National Institute for Transport

GBV – Gender-based Violence

GIZ – the German Society for International Cooperation, Ltd. (Gesellschaft für Internationale

Zusammenarbeit, GmbH)

GOPP – General Organization for Physical Planning

ILO – International Labor Organization

ISDF – Informal Settlements Development Facility

ITDP – Institute for Transportation & Development Policy

MDGs – Millennium Development Goals

MENA – Middle East and North Africa

NAT – National Authority for Tunnels

NCSCR – National Center for Social and Criminological Research

NCW – National Council for Women

NDP – National Democratic Party

NUA – New Urban Agenda

NUCs – New Urban Communities

NUCA – New Urban Communities Authority

SDGs – Sustainable Development Goals

RFP – Request for Proposals

RTTC – Right to the City

TfC – Transport for Cairo

TfL – Transport for London

UITP – International Association for Public Transport (Union Internationale des Transports

Publics)

UNFPA – United Nations Fund Population

VAW – Violence Against Women

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List of Figures

Figure 1 Large Informal Agglomerations; adapted from Séjourné & Sims, 2009... 46

Figure 2 Boundaries of Greater Cairo and its component parts; adapted from Séjourné & Sims, 2009 ... 46

Figure 3 Cairo in 1798 compared to 2009; source: Sims (2012) ... 48

Figure 4 Cairo in 1950 compared to 2009; source: Sims (2012) ... 48

Figure 5 Urban fabric morphologies of the city; source: studiomeem ... 50

Figure6 National Plans; adapted from Shawkat & Hendawy (2016) ... 50

Figure7 New Towns in Africa since 1960; source: International New Town Institute (2018) ... 51

Figure8 Incidence level of sexual harassment by age group in the year 2015; adapted from UNFPA (2015) ... 68

Figure9 Conceptualizing gendered mobility (produced by the author) ... 74

Figure10 Relation of themes of study to gendered mobility (produced by the author)... 76

Figure11 Breaking down the public-private dichotomy into a spectrum (produced by the author) ... 79

Figure12 Cairo modal share of motorized trips between 1971-2001; adapted from Huzayyin and Salem (2010) ... 91

Figure13 Urban Transportation Governance Scheme; adapted from Tadamun (2017) ... 96

Figure14 SHP units in new vs. existing cities by governorate; adapted from Shawkat (2018) .... 99

Figure15 Masakin Othman SHP location; adapted from Tadamun (2015) ...101

Figure16 Scheme for commuting burdens (produced by the author) ... 105

Figure17 Female-only transport schemes around the world; source: Tillous (2017)...115

Figure18 Cairo Metro working lines; adapted from Robert Shwandl found on UrbanRail.net (2012) ...118

Figure 19 Completed and projected metro lines; adapted from National Authority of Tunnels (NAT) ...119

Figure20 Cairo Metro train capacity by year; adapted from Arab Republic of Egypt (2016) ... 121

Figure21 Rapid Transit Ratio (RTR) for Cairo; adapted from ITDP (2015) ... 121

Figure22 Timeline for Cairo Metro women-only cars scheme and other significant events (produced by the author) ... 126

Figure23 Average modal split for traffic vehicles 2005-2010; adapted from Sims (2014) ... 128

Figure24 Metro women-only car scheme changes timeline (produced by the author) ...131

Figure25 Cairo Metro busy station staircase; source: Egyptian Streets [photographer unknown] ... 135

Figure26 Cairo Metro women-only car; source: Alaa Elkamhawi ... 135

Figure27 Practical design measures proposed in focus groups; adapted from Delatte et al. (2016) ... 139

Figure28 Monorail project render; source Tawfeek (2017) ... 139

Figure29 Suffragette cars on New York trains in 1909; source: Hulton Archive - Getty Images 145 Figure30 Sustainable Development Goals; source: Tadamun (2016) ... 166

Figure31 The development of women's representation in parliament 1979-2015; source: National Council for Women (2017)... 166

Figure32 National Strategy to Combat Violence Against Woemn 2015-2020 Actors; adapted from Rateb (2017) ... 169

Figure33 The Policy Cycle as per the female-segregated car policy on the Cairo Metro based on the Howlett and Ramesh (2003) model ... 176

Figure34 Gender analysis in policy process; adapted from Allen (2017) ...181

Figure35 Economic cost of GBV in public transportation in Cairo annually; adapted from UNFPA (2015) ...181

Figure36 Transport for Cairo experimental map for Cairo bus systems; source: Transport for Cairo ... 184

Figure37 Parameters of Adequate Urban Mobility; adapted from Tadamun (2016) ... 184

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Preface

Contemporary Cairo is underpinned both locally and globally by a dominating rhetoric of sexual harassment and the inhibition of mobility for women in the public space. One of the most heavily projected figures in local and international press states that ‘99.3% of Egyptian women are subject to street harassment’, while 82.6% ‘neither feel secure nor safe in the street’ (UN Women, 2013). In the first international poll of its kind, the Thomson Reuters Foundation (2017) ranked Cairo, Egypt as the number one most unsafe megacity in the world for women. The study, which was carried out by experts on women's issues focused on how well women were protected from sexual violence, also looked at access to healthcare, education and protection against disruptive cultural practices as indicators. As more and more people concentrate in urban areas and Cairo continues to thrive and grow as a metropolitan region, the need for a more critical understanding of the micro and macro-level forces that influence women’s public safety and consequently, their rights to mobility to public space is as crucial as ever.

From my primary research, I have come across plenty of work tackling gender inequality in space as a sociological phenomenon, and in economic and political regard, but little scholarship that is specifically focused on the role of gendered biases in urban planning. The relationship, as the research reveals is complex and multi-tiered. However, there are certain clear areas of focus in which this relationship becomes apparent—to which I dedicate the bulk of this research. While hardly conclusive in itself, this work is intended as a starting point to a new urban vision; one that centers into view not only issues of spatial justice along economic lines, but also along social lines—in this case focusing on gender.

I believe there is a need for a directed conversation that operates at the intersection of feminist studies and urban policy, which this research aims to contribute to. Consulting both Egyptian feminist scholarship and global literature on feminist urbanism, I attempt to deconstruct the main agents at play in the formulation of our collective conception of gender in public space, in order to reformulate an argument around how to address gender inequality in public space and retrace the trajectories of gendered urban mobility. Inclusively, the research is structured as following:

The first chapter sets out a theoretical foundation based on a critical engagement with global discourses in the field, variously referred to as ‘feminist urbanism’, and some of the key voices that emerged within it;

The second chapter of the thesis introduces key contextual metanarratives underpinning mobility discourses, from social constructs to urban compositions;

The third chapter offers a critical engagement of gendered mobility as a direct and indirect subsequence of public space organization, public transport provision and shifts in commuting patterns. I argue that the three spheres of analysis are intricately connected in their

contributions to reinforcing gendered mobility;

In the fourth chapter, I present the case study and set out the timeline of its development, its key structural components and a critical assessment of its impacts on its targeted and non-targeted audiences;

The final chapter presents an interpretative formulation of the key findings of the research and proposes fundamental avenues for gender-conscious urban theory and practice in Cairo.

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Research Questions

Given the exploratory approach of the research, the research questions posed are intentionally broad and open to encapsulate a wide understanding of the discipline of feminist urban studies and conceptualize its precise manifestation in the local context in intersection with dominant urban narratives in Cairo. The first two questions represent the core of the research and the third question acts as a secondary line of investigation:

1. How is mobility in Cairo gendered? What are the main fundamental constructs that shape its trajectory in our current contemporary landscape?

2. In what ways does urban policy address this issue? And what are the positive/negative impacts of these policies in the broader understanding of gendered mobility rights? 3. What are the possibilities and trajectories for a feminist urban perspective in Cairo?

Research Objectives

The research objectives stem from the main research questions such that (a-b) corresponds to the first question, (c-d) correspond to the second question, and (e-f) reflect the aims of the third.

a. To understand space gendering processes in the public space in contemporary Cairo (both as socio-spatial phenomena and manifestations of patriarchal power relations) that contribute to inequality in mobility.

b. To critically examine how dominant urban planning trends implicate on the possibilities of women to navigate urban space and access public life opportunities.

c. To critically interrogate public urban policy and its consideration of gender issues, with a specific focus on their impacts on female mobility.

d. To study in depth the history and logistics of the female-segregated Cairo subway carriages and analyze the effects of this scheme on a global and local scale and in relation to a rights discourse.

e. To examine how feminist discourse deals with urban issues; and how urban discourse deals with feminist issues in Egypt.

f. To study the possibilities, potentials and avenues for a more progressive, gender-inclusive and gender-aware urban future.

Research Methodology

In the lack of a substantial volume of literature on the chosen topic in the chosen context (Cairo), the research follows a diversified approach that simultaneously investigates three areas of study: the urban condition in Cairo, gender studies regarding the case of Cairo (especially focused around ideas of sexual harassment and gender-based violence) and feminist urban studies as conceived in global theoretical frameworks and international cases. Throughout the research, these three areas of focus will be consulted interchangeably to attempt to bridge the gaps found in local research at present.

In essence, the research follows a descriptive, qualitative and exploratory – as opposed to conclusive – approach. In order to fill perceived gaps, the research is built around a number of diverse qualitative methods of primary and secondary research. While some of the gathered

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information presents some useful quantitative references, the majority of the research relies on qualitative methods of analysis formed by a reconciliation between global literature, local empirical evidence, tangential research (in the respective areas of gender studies and urban planning) and expert opinions of key local actors who exhibit a special relation to the scope of research.

Holistically, the research draws on methods of:

- content analysis: including the review of a variety of grey documents from academic and research papers to government policy documents;

- historical and ethnographic analysis: relying on a wide scope of theoretical literature in the respective areas of study;

- case study investigation: a dominant tool of analysis in this research is enabled due to the availability one case of gender-driven urban policy, which offers a lens for how gender is dealt with in urban policy in Cairo. I argue that the case study is unique because a) it allows the examination of the use of segregation as a planning tool to tackle issues of gendered mobility in the public sphere, b) it is a unique urban policy that is clearly instated to address issues of sexual violence, c) because of its longevity and continuity of over nearly 30 years, which provides a space for examining outcomes and effects in relation to its initial aims and possible long-run effects, and d) because it is a policy which has several precedents overseas with mixed results; one that has attracted much debate over its viability in both pragmatic and ethical terms both locally and abroad. In this sense, it opens up the field to interrogate how women and women’s mobility is viewed in the city and the ways in which they are addressed. However, due to the lack of policy documents or up-to-date quantitative studies on the measure, the research on the case study relies heavily on secondary research, critical observation and input from key informant interviews.

- key informant interviews with local actors: specifically targeting local decision makers as direct actors in the development of urban and feminist agendas, academic researchers in the fields of gender studies and urban planning, with the latter targeting researchers who have worked or dealt with issues of gender, and representatives of local urban practices and feminist grassroots initiatives with a direct involvement and intervention into the areas under study. A full list of the interviewees, some basic information about their positions and the type of interview conducted is presented at the end of this research.

Research Limitations

The first and foremost limitation of the research was the lack of sufficient research and critical contextual theorization in the new and still forming field. Thus, most of the theories are adapted from global literature, used with caution and a critical approach to contextual validity and relevance. As a result, an extra effort was made to set the groundwork for critical theory in intersection with local metanarratives of gender and urban space.

One of the most critical limitations of the research is lack of hard data and updated statistics of large-scale user-based data for public transport and in particular the metro system, and the scarcity and relative outdatedness of gender-disaggregated data, especially relating to the case study. Since large-scale surveys were outside of the scope of my research, a qualitative and interpretative approach was utilized, while using the most recent publically available data as proxies for the situation today.

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Research Contributions

The research serves as an open invitation for future researchers to critically examine gender-biased practices in urban planning, while offering some practical interpretative and analytical tools to study gender in relation to urban mobility and the right to public space. While presenting some answers to critical urban questions, the research also opens up the field for several

others—presenting several avenues for deeper analysis and discussion along the lines of the conducted research. Ultimately, the research also serves as an open and multi-faceted documentation of a critical moment in which gender-based inequality in public space is epidemic but no one is questioning the contribution of space to its constitution.

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Chapter 1:

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Chapter 1:

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Chapter 1 | Global discourses in feminist urbanism: A literature

review

Feminist urbanism is still a largely forming discipline. Its early proponents emerged only within the last three or four decades; introducing theoretical understandings that aimed to

conceptualize the role of sexism within the broad field of spatial studies. Some of these early works that essentially aimed to combine together theories from the discipline of gender studies with those from geography and urban planning, included Dolores Hayden’s 1980 essay titled ‘What Would a Non-Sexist City Look Like? Speculations on Housing, Urban Design, and Human

Work’, Elizabeth Wilson’s 1992 book titled The Sphinx in the City, and Doreen Massey’s Space, Place and Gender (1994). Although some of the ideas of these early contributions may be

considered outdated today, these works (among others) served to set the pace for a deep and structural interrogation of urban planning as a male-driven machine that functions under patriarchal notions of space and place (see Massey, 1994), giving rise to gendered urban environments that serve to oppress or, in the least, impede women’s daily urban experiences. New urban feminist voices emerging worldwide aim to deconstruct the intricate gendering processes of cities around the world, paying close attention to structural factors implicit in the fields related to urban planning in particular, and stressing the need to break the male

hegemony of planning institutions around the globe, in order to better plan for more inclusive cities; and fight persistent discrimination against women and other gendered bodies in today’s cities of the world.

In this chapter, I attempt to give a balanced view of the main arguments put forth in some of the chief scholastic work produced over the years and originating from various places around the world. With respect to the aforementioned limitations of the field as a new and still largely under-researched discipline, this situation is even more true for literature covering areas of the Global South (Fenster & Hamdan-Saliba, 2013; Peake & Rieker, 2013). The hegemony of knowledge produced by Anglo-American theorists, naturally, does not always apply to other contexts. At the same time, the availability of knowledge produced in the area of interest to this thesis, the Middle East, for example, is limited, and accessibility further restricted to inner circles of practice (Fenster & Hamdan-Saliba, 2013). Despite these hurdles, I attempt to put forth elemental arguments from both ends of the spectrum and to maintain a critical eye with regards to international texts. To this end, I divide the chapter into three main parts: the first part

provides a look at the key contributions of the field of feminist urbanism in particular in

understanding the gendering processes imbued in our everyday urban spaces and the various structural and contextual factors that underpin them; the second segment explores the capacity of a rights-based approach in informing the discourse of feminist urbanism in relation to a number of key urban rights theoretical frameworks with a particular eye on gender undertones; and finally, the last section delves into some of the main challenges in relying on hegemonic knowledge structures within the field and the capacity and limitations of their translatability to the case under study, as well as other diverse contexts around the world. These three broad areas serve as the supporting framework for the ideas and theorizations pursued in the chapters to come with reference to gendering narratives in public urban spaces of the dynamic and multi-faceted city of Cairo, the capital of Egypt.

1.1. Understanding the gendering processes of urban spaces through the

contributions of feminist urbanism

At the core of the branch of feminist urbanism, feminist urban studies, or more traditionally

feminist geography is the fundamental argument that in many ways, geography matters to

gender, and that gender relations vary, not just over the course of time but also across space (Massey, 1994). Doreen Massey, who wrote the influential 1994 book titled ‘Space, Place and Gender’, and one of the early pillars of the field, proposed the idea of looking at gender not as a

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social phenomenon in space but rather, considers both social phenomena and space as mutually constituted entities, the organization of each embedded in the construction of the other to create particular articulated ‘moments’ defined as ‘place’. As she puts it: the spatial is social relations ‘stretched out’ (Massey, 1994)—keeping in line with contemporary views of space as relational, dynamic and politicized (Lefebvre, 1991; Miller et al., 2013; Pugalis & Giddings, 2011; Soja, 2009). In her general introduction to the book, Massey writes:

All attempts to institute horizons, to establish boundaries, to secure the identity of places, can in this sense therefore be seen to be attempts to stabilize the meaning of particular envelopes of space-time (p. 5).

Massey argues that there is an inherent gendering process both in the identity formations of space as opposed to time, and in the construction of an identity of ‘place’. She criticizes

traditional western processes of identity formation based on objects-relation theory that strives to define concepts by way of contrasts and dualisms. In essence, these are definitions formed around ideas of boundedness and exclusion, defensiveness and counter-positionality (Massey, 1994). It is also the same system of thought that so sharply opposes masculine to feminine, defining them through a continuous series of oppositions. She contrasts this with feminist modes of identity formation which circle around ‘relational’ understandings of ideas that are ever-changing and multiple, which she uses as a base point for defining space, place and

gender throughout her book. The main argument proposed here is twofold: a) that conception of space, place and gender have been viewed in a gendered light in and of themselves, and b) that the method by which they have been defined is in itself intrinsically gendered. To illustrate, Massey examines how notions of ‘space’ and ‘place’ have been historically gendered both in contrast to time, and in their metaphorical connectedness to notions of nostalgia and

romanticism (signified in notions of place). To start with, Massey argues that in the same way that feminine is so radically opposed to masculine, space and time have also been strictly dichotomized; the latter aligning with history, progress and order, and coded as ‘masculine’; whereas space is seen to represent the opposite of these things and is traditionally coded as ‘feminine’. Place, on the contrary, is traditionally associated with nostalgic and romantic ideas such as in the expression ‘no place like home’ and ‘home is where the heart is’, in which there is often a search for a ‘lost’ or unreachable identity (Massey, 1994). In a similar characteristic dualism, womanhood is often used as a metaphor for Nature, and thus tends to associate with what has been lost or left behind. Hence, ‘A place called home’ is often personified by those same characteristics as those assigned to woman/mother/lover (ibid.).

Another point of departure that is often highlighted in feminist interrogations of urban concepts is the perceived relationship between the term ‘local’ with reference to women, as they have been traditionally thought to lead more ‘local’ lives than men do (the classic hallmark of the public/private gendered division). In this way, the concept of locality is used in a debilitating manner to signify boundaries within which women can operate effectively. In the same way, the feminist movement is stifled through, again, derogatory insinuation of the feminist problem as being a ‘local’ problem. Here the notion of ‘locality’ is exploited with the aim of limiting

feminism’s potential for multi-scalar mobilization and access to global networks of power (Massey, 1994; Miller et al., 2013). In a nutshell, what Massey’s work fundamentally points out is that space is not merely a vessel for gender-based exclusion and violence, but rather that the gendering of space starts from the symbolic interpretation of space and place as fundamental concepts, and that the role that these interpretations play in transmitting gendered messages is critical to understanding how space and place are consequentially used. To quote another excerpt from her book, Massey attests that:

From the symbolic meaning of spaces/places and the clearly gendered messages which they transmit, to straightforward exclusion by violence, spaces and places are not only

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gender is constructed and understood. The limitation of women's mobility, in terms both of identity and space, has been in some cultural contexts a crucial means of subordination. Moreover, the two things - the limitation on mobility in space, the attempted

consignment/confinement to particular places on the one hand, and the limitation on identity on the other - have been crucially related. (p. 179)

One of the key theoretical understandings underpinning the study of gender as a social

construct is the necessity for an open and attentive flexibility with which notions of ‘woman’ and ‘man’ ought to be defined. The common pitfall in institutional policy narratives and agendas that attempt to address women’s needs (spatially, politically, or other) is the rigidity and fixity with which these very needs are conceptualized (Peake & Rieker, 2013). In the context of urban planning in particular, an a priori articulation of ‘woman’ and what a woman’s life entails

becomes even more constrictive at a time at the beginning of the 21st_{century when more women}

than ever before dwell in cities (ibid.). By attaching specific preconceived meanings to women as subjects, we a) mask specific (anti-hegemonic) identities from historical subjectivity, and b) remain trapped under hegemonic ideas of women’s place(s) in the city (ibid.). As Peake & Rieker (2013) eloquently argue:

Articulations of women with the urban cannot presuppose a particular logic, rather the formations they take – the specific combining of public and private, of mobility versus seclusion, and so on – are historically and geographically contingent, constituted through struggle, leading to a broad range of gendered practices and subjectivities (Kindle Locations 279-288).

The ‘particular logic’ with which Peake & Rieker contend, is of course one that pivots around hegemonic ideas of women as guardians of the private sphere, and men, the public (Massey, 1994). What, we must ask then, are the practical repercussions of such a logic? According to Kristine B. Miranne et al. (2000), violence against women acts as one of the mechanisms for instigating the spatial dichotomy such that women may become anchored in their socially designated private spheres out of an internalized fear of male violence (Miranne et al., 2000; as cited in Arjmand, 2017). In leaving the safety of the private space, women (and other

marginalized gendered categories) risk verbal and physical harassment simply on the basis of crossing these institutionalized boundaries.

Women’s lives in urban spaces are shaped by both the visible and invisible borders created by social structures of patriarchal nature. These predominant social structures invariably feed into the spatial institutions that seek to conceptualize and control urban space. Thus, it goes without saying that when these authoritative positions are held predominantly by men, critical planning decisions become biased in the favor of men and against women, effectively creating what we have come to term as ‘gendered spaces’ (Doan, 2010; as cited in Arjmand, 2017). An alternative understanding of women and their ‘place’ in the public sphere is thus imperative to an urban reality that is attuned to how women and men experience space differently; one that does not center around pathological ideas of the public-private dichotomy.

1.1.1. The public-private dichotomy

As Michelle Rosaldo competently argued in her 1980 paper titled The Use and Abuse of

Anthropology: Reflections on Feminism and Cross-Cultural Understanding, the public-private

dichotomy is rooted in a belief that women are “tied down” by functions that merely reflect their female biology. She breaks down the crux of the problem as follows:

The most serious deficiency of a model based upon two opposed spheres appears, in short, in its alliance with the dualisms of the past, dichotomies which teach that women must be understood not in terms of relationship-with other women and with men-but of difference

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and apartness. "Tied down" by functions we imagine to belong to mothers and the home, our sisters are conceptualized as beings who presently are, and have at all times been, the same, not actors but mere subjects of male action and female biology (p. 409).

The opposition of domestic and public space and the way it somehow struck a correlation with male dominance in society was a staple of traditional social scientific thought (Rosaldo, 1980). Modern sociological discourse recognized the restriction and infliction the separation of family and society produced on women, yet it never questioned the underlying existence of the two spheres. Rosaldo concurs that in all human societies, this sexual asymmetry may correspond to a rough institutional division between domestic and public spheres, but she contends that the division was an ‘intelligible product of mutual accommodation’ to the biological differences between men and women, rather than a necessary or preordained state of affairs.

As Arjmand describes it, the public-private dichotomy spatially represents the productive-reproductive realms of society (the spaces where social relations are produced, as opposed to where they are reproduced), the assignments to men and women respectively, follow this logic (Arjmand, 2017). This logic, which as Petra Doan asserts, is used to legitimize the oppression of women and further marginalize transgendered populations, still permeates urban studies today (Doan, 2010). There is a need, therefore, even within scholastic circles, to reconceptualize gendered space along a continuum, rather than within limited imaginaries of two polar extremes (Gal, 2005; as cited in Arjmand, 2017).

The analytical power of concepts of ‘public’ and ‘private’ have been scrutinized by historians over the years for their limited capacity in offering sound and accurate understandings of premodern gendered spaces (van den Heuvel, 2018). The same may be said for its theoretical capacity to conceptualize meanings of space in non-Western contexts. As Junxi Qian cautions, ideas of ‘publicness’ in the west mainly center around the Habermasian ideal of the public space as a site for democratic claim-making, while conceptions of publicness in the Global South are ‘far from a homogenous monolith’ with diverse and often contradictory views on the meanings attached to public (or private) space and variable underlying power relations that are concealed within these meanings (Qian, 2014):

There is an urgent need for scholars to interrogate much more extensively how the very idea(l) of being public is conceived and practised in specific contexts, and what notion of publicness achieves a more dominant status, and eventually becomes tensioned with other visions of publicness (e.g. Kaviraj, 1997). In other words, the public/private divide, though perhaps widely identifiable, is constituted as an active response to context-specific social, economic, political and cultural dynamics (Huang, 1993) (Qian, 2014; p.842).

The topic of how different geo-historical conceptions of public and private space influence women and gender relations will be revisited later, under the section titled Critical global urban

perception shifts and their influence on gender spatial rights.

1.1.2. Women and fear of violence as an inhibitor of mobility in public space

Though a lesser discussed subject in spatial fields—feelings and emotions are prime

contributors to the processes of space production (Koskela, 1999). The spatiality of women’s fear, to be concise, has received greater theoretical attention in later years, much of which focuses on reactions and coping mechanisms against harassment and violence (Pain, 2000). In more recent years, a growing amount of research suggests that male fears have been

downplayed in the past (due to gaps in survey methodologies), especially when considered in intersections with race, sexuality and class (ibid.). However, it is contended that, when fears of sexual violence are considered (in addition to fears of other types of urban crime), women bear a differentially higher burden in that regard across the spectrum (Pain, 2000; Koskela, 1999).

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Experiences of attempts at violence, harassment incidents and generalized fears based on accumulated stories of violence, all contribute to the creation of exclusory spaces for women on account of their gender(Pain, 1994; as cited in Koskela, 1999). In that sense, fear of violence is both a consequence of and a perpetrator of gendered inequalities in public space. As Koskela adequately puts it, ‘women’s subjective feelings contribute to the intersubjective power-related process of producing space’ (ibid.). Urban space, she contends, is produced through gender relations, and reproduced in everyday practices that work to diminish women’s agency over their own spatial behavior.

As Rachel Pain argues, ‘a mistaken assumption common to more traditional geographical approach is that the physical areas women fear are more important than the symbolic connotations of space’ (Pain, 1994; as cited in Koskela, 1999). In other words, traditional

geographical theory treated space as a container and overlooked the interdependent qualities of social and spatial domains, as in later critical geographical discourse. Another distinction that the field of geography has routinely overlooked in the past is the relationship between gender violence in public space with private space. By solely focusing on fear of violence in public, most research has overlooked the gendered associations of the two spheres and the effect of each on the other. As Pain has shown, private violence can instigate fear in public space as well (Pain, 1991; as cited in Koskela, 1999). Not only that, but it has been argued that although the majority of the worst crimes of violence are domestic, women’s perception tends to associate fear of violence with ‘strange men’ and in public space (Valentine, 1989; as cited in Koskela, 1999). As Pain asserts, ‘perceptions of safety and danger are strongly linked to the ideological division between public and private space’ (Pain, 1997; as cited in Koskela, 1999). The problem is that private violence is often invisible, while public violence is visible. However, studies have shown that domestic violence may affect the broader spatial experience and the choices of women who are either affected or threatened by it (Pain, 1991; as cited in Koskela, 1999). More on this relationship between public and private experiences of violence will be covered in Chapter Two. Public and private space thus can be seen, in relation to power and exclusion, as ‘reciprocally conditioned’ (Sibley, 1995; as cited in Koskela, 1999).

Feelings of liberation and oppression (or fear) are not universal. As Tovi Fenster’s studies on expressions of belonging1_{in public and private on women in Jerusalem and London show, ideas}

around sense of safety and belonging vary according to background and context (Fenster, 2005a). An example she mentions of a middle-aged woman from Jerusalem who describes her home as ‘a prison’ and the city as ‘freedom’, ‘personal freedom’, ‘atmosphere’ and ‘spring’ – suggests an alternative perspective that emphasizes the criticality of looking at fear of violence from a comparative lens that analyzes conditions within both spheres simultaneously.

Mobility is a slippery term in the discourse around women’s freedoms in public space. Women’s voluntary decisions to limit their mobility cannot be equated with individual choice. As Koskela puts it,

In a situation where a threat of male violence is not present, a woman’s choice (not to go out) could very well be different. Thus, her decision is not a matter of individual mobility but rather a result of gendered (and age-related) power. Much of the power which modifies women’s behaviour can be regarded as being control through ‘consent’ rather than through ‘coercion’ (p. 121).

1_{The research project in which majority group and minority group residents in London and Jerusalem were interviewed}

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Thus, there is a hidden dimension of power and exclusion that is often undermined in rhetoric around mobility/immobility in public space that is, in turn, very much contingent on women’s reactions to them. The actions and responses taken by women towards perceived fears ultimately serve to maintain and/or challenge the patriarchal dominance over public space (Koskela, 1999).

The spatial role of dress as mediator between public and private

In 1991, the feminist scholar Elizabeth Wilson wrote that ‘the fear of the city is rooted in a male fear of unregulated female sexuality’ (Bondi, 1993).

Worldwide, women employ a variety of tactics and strategies to circumvent the tensions

associated with such fears. Throughout history, one of the key heavily documented tactics used by women to negotiate barriers of public presence has been form of dress. In many parts around the world, most notably in Arab and Muslim countries, veiling or conservative dress forms

continue to dominate ideas around female mobility and to play an essential part in women’s public sense of safety (as well as their sense of entitlement to that safety). However, my aim here is not to discuss veiling (in its widest sense) as a political, cultural or social tool, but rather as a spatial tool; one that women resort to as a means to negotiate their rights to public space. According to Fenster, only a small number of researchers have studied the veil as a spatial practice in a number of Arab or Muslim countries (Fenster & Hamdan-Saliba, 2013). Generally, their work discussed the role of the veil as a means of safeguarding a woman’s privacy and allowing her to access and navigate space in the public sphere while dispelling fears of sexual harassment or unwanted attention (Aftaab, 2005; Secor, 2002; Moghadam, 1994; Hatem, 1993; as cited in Fenster & Hamdan-Saliba, 2013). As Sadiqi and Ennaji argue of Morocco, abiding by the dress code of the veil is a way to make public space permitted (Sadiqi and Ennaji, 2006; as cited in Fenster & Hamdan-Saliba, 2013). It would be difficult, however, to accept such a broad statement without making some key clarifications. First of all, the veil is not a singular or unified form of dress; it is as varied as is the attention (or lack of) that it draws. It is also as complex a phenomenon as is the environment in which it is practiced. It would be extremely simplistic to concur that the veil protects women from sexual harassment in particular countries, in huge part because in most cases, it does not. However, this does not diminish its often-perceived

essentialism as an a priori measure to step outside one’s house with a length of precaution and comfort, especially in particular contexts and within particular communities. Nonetheless, as many feminist researchers have countlessly retold in the study of sexual harassment, what happens to a woman after she steps onto the public street is seldom triggered by how she is dressed.

In Iran, an imposed and much-contested national decree obligates women to be veiled in public space on the very foundation of overcoming gendered tension and allowing women ‘equal’ access to public space (Amir-Ebrahimi, 2006; as cited in Qian, 2014). In most Arab or Muslim countries, however, veiling is a personal choice centering around community-driven principles and expected modes of conduct. In such contexts, literature that highlights veiling as a means to allow women in particular socio-cultural contexts to access public space may obscure how non-veiled female identities may be denied equal/safe access on the same basis. Veiling as a spatial tactic is thus a double-edged sword, in the sense that women who do not adhere to the

hegemonic (whether state-enforced or socially accepted) form of dress are subject to shaming and become culpable in the eyes of the general public for the acts of harassment/violence taken towards them. Another issue is that this model form of dress is largely imagined and does not take a fixed or clear form in the collective conscience, which facilitates its role as a weapon to attack women of any appearance.

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Dominant ideologies and rooted power structures, hence, play a particular role in influencing (accepted) images of women in public (Qian, 2014). In this, it is important to highlight the entanglement of traditional cultural ideologies with progressive, emancipatory top-down agendas to perpetuate a certain image of the ‘modern woman’, within broader discourses of modernity. Here, we see how female form of dress is politicized as a national strategy to propagate certain formal images. A specific body of literature in Turkey, in contrast, examines how the veil in particular is politicized by ordinary women in response to dominant emancipatory politics in the unsettled tension between Islamism and secularism (see Qian, 2014). The self-chosen veiling in this particular context is used as a tactic to contest hegemonic political

ideologies, and as a means to express a sense of cultural difference within a predominant sense of European modernity (ibid.).

1.1.3. Effect of global political paradigms on women and on feminist urbanism trajectories

‘Space reflects the power symmetry of the social setting it resides in’ (Arjmand, 2017). One of the main argument that feminist urban scholars hold is that the patriarchal framing of urban spaces systematically privileges masculinist power all the way from its broad representation of social order, to the interpretative dichotomies and the stereotypical gender roles associated with them.

In essence, the gender roles ascribed to social life are manifested into urban life and planning of the city. At the heart of it, ‘sexual identity’ is perceived as the enforced repetition of culturally prescribed codes which outline what Bourdieu calls ‘the habitus’, the fixed structural systems that are created based on socially ascribed meanings and symbols that have become part of our collective subconscious (ibid.) Breaking down and understanding these systematic processes and the structural forces they are associated with is the first step to conceiving an alternative, gender-fair urban.

Before delving into a deeper interrogation of gender politics in relation to urban space, it is important to reflect on how governing political ideology has shaped (and continues to shape) the way in which feminist urbanist studies operate. So far, we have argued that geography and space interact with gender along two main paths: in terms of geographic positionality, which includes a region’s own specific constructs of economic and social history that form its own concoction of a ‘habitus’, and more immediately, in terms of the spatial organization within a specific locality (i.e. in the way in which urban space is constructed, perceived and used based on these co-acting constructs). We have not yet addressed, however, the overarching role of underlying structural factors that political frameworks play in forming these gender-space perceptual constructs. This section aims to bring forth some of the main directions of thought concerning the role of global political paradigms in recent history on the possibilities and trajectories of feminist urbanism; most centrally on the role of neoliberalism on the feminist agenda and on absorbing difference.

In Gender, Urban Space and the Right to Urban Life, Beebeejaun argues that despite the evident advances towards the rights of women in urban contexts worldwide, women’s continued

endurance of an unequal position in society is trifold: in economic inequality in the labor market, in the disproportionate burden of unpaid labor they carry across a range of political and

leadership roles, and finally, in the persistence of widespread violence against them (Beebeejaun, 2017).

In short, what many feminist authors point to is that there are problematic entanglements of feminist goals with neoliberal projects which have, in the past few decades, pushed the cause astray, in a way which is not necessarily particular only to feminism. Hardt and Negri (2000) contend that neo-liberalism has displayed an ability to ‘absorb difference and translate it into a question of governmentality’, comprising a significant challenge for social movements at large

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(as cited in Peake & Rieker, 2013). This is also echoed in Massey’s work, where she criticizes David Harvey and Edward Soja, two of the most articulate advocators on the shortcomings of neo-liberalism, for trying to force all struggles under ‘the overall frame of… class politics’. Materialism, she argues, is far wider than an ‘emphasis upon the power of money and capital circulation’, quoting from Harvey’s 1989 book The Condition of Postmodernity. There is no space within a limited view of struggle that focuses on ‘common experiences’ to recognize the importance of difference and conflict, of which gender is a primary component (Massey, 1994). While the urban scale has become an increasingly important site for attempts to promote progressive collective rights in the face of neoliberalism (Beebeejaun, 2017), a biased focus on issues of class persists. This is reflected in the upsurge of research on the issues of

gentrification and re-urbanization in the northern studies, and the focus on gated communities and slum-upgrading in the south (Peake & Rieker, 2013); while aspects of urbanity concerning gender relations and the gendered nature of these phenomena continue to take a backseat and remain largely under-researched (van den Berg, 2017).

This is not to say that gender-driven urban agendas are wholly absent. However, despite the prevalence of international agendas that have risen to tackle issues of gender since the 1970s, there are real dangers that gender mainstreaming2_{has been increasingly used as a bureaucratic}

tool that is distanced from the rights agenda that initially emerged four decades ago

(Beebeejaun, 2017). In particular, the gender governance mechanisms set in place over the past few decades, initiated with the neo-liberal establishment of Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)3_{, and their new regulatory and accountability environment that has been set globally}

have, according to Peake and Rieker, produced tremendous challenges for feminism. Fraser also spoke about the problem of the institutionalization of gender mainstreaming such that the discourse became independent of the movement (as cited in Peake & Rieker, 2013). The disconnect, as Peake and de Souza argue, has resulted in the co-optation and NGO-isation of feminists into ‘fundable and manageable projects’ (ibid.). More recently, the gendered dimensions of planning seem also to have been nuanced into the fabric of more generic ‘diversity’ and ‘inclusivity’ planning goals (Beebeejaun, 2017). This apparent divorce of gender-triggered planning tools and a rights-based scheme opens up a space to critically engage in a discussion around the transmissibility between current urban policies aimed at gender equality and a theoretical rights-based discourse focused on the urban experience.

Finally, and as will be discussed more in depth following, part of the problem with the neoliberal project relates to the way that knowledge is produced—of which the field of feminist urban studies is no exception. Despite contextual variances, as a unifying concept neoliberalism’s overriding logic pivots on the pursuit of economic growth, which fundamentally works to conceal social and political forces behind the prevailing economic forces of market (Peake & Rieker, 2013). As a result, and with the advent of global regulatory frameworks, the ongoing problems of different parts of the world have been re-problematized into problems at the geographical scale: as a product of failed states, culture and so on (ibid.). It is this “geographical” production of

2_{Gender mainstreaming is the concept of bringing gender issues into the mainstream of society which was clearly}

established as a global strategy for promoting gender equality in the Platform for Action adopted at the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women, held in Beijing (China) in 1995. The idea highlighted the necessity to ensure that gender equality is a primary goal in all area(s) of social and economic development (cited from the International Labor Organization).

3_{The United Nations Millennium Development Goals are eight goals that all 191 UN member states have agreed to try to}

achieve by the year 2015. The United Nations Millennium Declaration, signed in September 2000 commits world leaders to combat poverty, hunger, disease, illiteracy, environmental degradation, and discrimination against women. The MDGs are derived from this Declaration, and all have specific targets and indicators (cited from the World Health Organization).

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knowledge in the field of urban studies, and by association, in the field of feminist urban studies as well, that is being put under scrutiny and criticized for producing contrasting lines of

knowledge. Neoliberalism, however, is not the only culprit in addressing women’s trajectories in urban space. The following section looks into some of the main global urban shifts in recent history and their effects on gendered subjects in cities around the world.

1.1.4. Critical global urban perception shifts and their influence on gender spatial rights

In the previous section, I have reflected briefly on the effects of our global political paradigms on the discipline of feminist urbanism and on the capabilities of the wider feminist agenda both in academe (systems of knowledge production) and in practice (gender mainstreaming and related projects). More critical to the direction of this thesis is the direct effect of these governing paradigms on our perceptions of the city that consciously or subconsciously shape the way we design and deal with cities, and the gendering processes that go into these efforts. As Harvey carefully notes, in order to understand our current relation to the right to the city, we must reflect on how we have been made and remade time and again over history, and the effects of the powerful social forces that shape our urban process (Harvey, 2008). This is in itself a various and broad discussion; I will attempt here to focus only on one of the main cornerstones of the intersection between gender and the city: the effect of different conceptions of ‘publicness’ and the public-private dichotomy on the way our cities are shaped, reflecting on differences across geography and time, as referenced in a number of related international texts4_{. Through this brief}

examination, I aim to reveal how ideology interacts with various geographical histories to create diverse conceptions of ‘publicness’ across the spectrum – if anything, as a testament to the diversity of implications for gender in space in the global context, and the need to understand each in its own right.

The advent of the Modern city and the institutionalization of gendered spaces

Despite the heterogeneity of traditional, religious, cultural and normative values based on which gendered spaces have been historically formed around the globe, the rise of industrialization and movement of production to places distant from the household is said to be the undercurrent of the modern institutionalization of these normative values, one which endures in many

societies today as ‘an ideal societal structure' (Arjmand, 2017).

Across the literature, ideas around the gendered conception of the modern city vary between two competing notions: the traditional theory that operates around the strict separation of public and private spheres5_{, and alternative studies}6_{that highlight the role of prevailing patriarchal}

ideas in creating biased historical lenses for real-life practices, but which reveal themselves in alternative historical documentation such as court records and trial transcriptions that reveal a more complex understanding and a multiplicity of gendered meanings attributed to space by modern city dwellers.

According to this theory, which pivots around the idea that women in the pre-modern era were as much a part of public life as men, gendered notions of public and private came into being only with the rise of capitalism and industrialization, whereby middle-class women ‘withdrew from

4_{Due to the immense diversity of contextual factors in individual regional progressions globally, the chosen text aims to}

firstly give an overview of the dominant paradigm as analyzed and conceptualized in the bulk of international literature, as relating to areas of the Global North and South, with a focus on the Middle East and North Africa for the purposes of this thesis.

5_{See Massey, 1994; van den Berg, 2017.} 6_{See van den Heuvel, 2018 and Rinne, 2002.}

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productive labor and were increasingly confined to their homes’ (van den Heuvel, 2018). In early industrial cities, new forms of contestation emerged as means to restrict women’s movement in public. Flanagan, for example, studied how women’s public toilets were the subject of intense debate as men organized to prohibit them (Flanagan, 2014; as cited in Beebeejaun, 2017). According to Massey, in the modern city, it was the very strict distinction between public and private that manifested its gendered characteristics. Of modern Paris, she writes:

This period of the midnineteenth century was a crucial one in the development of the notion of 'the separation of spheres' and the confinement of women, ideologically if not for all women in practice, to the 'private' sphere of the suburbs and the home (Davidoff and Hall, 1983; Hall, 1981). The public city which is celebrated in the enthusiastic descriptions of the dawn of modernism was a city for men. The boulevards and cafes, and still more the bars and brothels, were for men - the women who did go there were for male consumption. Nineteenth-century Paris presented very different impressions and possibilities for men and for women (p. 233-34)

Commenting on the Fordist western city, Marguerite van den Berg draws out similar analogies. She refers to this situation as possibly ‘the extreme spatial consequence of the sexual contract’; the contract organizing ‘the subordination of women into the private, reproductive and suburban realm and granting men access into the public, productive and urban realm’ (van den Berg, 2017). Such reconstructions of modern European city women are often based on ideas of the

flâneur7_{, an idea which in essence many feminist scholars have argued is the root of gendered}

urban knowledge. In her 1992 The Sphinx in the City, Wilson writes:

It is this flâneur, the flâneur as a man of pleasure, as a man who takes visual possession of the city, who has emerged in postmodern feminist discourse as the embodiment of the “male gaze”. He represents men’s visual and voyeuristic mastery over women (Wilson, 1992; p.92). Elizabeth Wilson and Lauren Elkin, on the other hand, assert the presence of women in modern city streets, in spite of the patriarchal perceptions that accompanied it, maintaining that women had greater agency and ‘street ownership’ than is traditionally assumed (as cited in van den Heuvel, 2018). Wilson also asserts that despite its difficulties, the city liberates women far more than rural life or suburban domesticity (Rieker & Ali, 2008). In fact, it is now widely accepted that the traditional division between public and private spaces in the modern city did not directly translate into masculine and feminine spaces, and that women were not merely passive agents in early urban processes of space appropriation.

Colonial histories and the gendering processes of cities of the global South

Though generally lacking, there is an increasing amount of literature in recent years from cities of the global south that trace the relationship between the gendering of space and the

ideological framing that went into formations of the habitus over time. However, there is often the problem of literature on countries from the Global South being studied from a

‘developmentalist’, Eurocentric (and often orientalist, in the case of the Middle East) frame and with the use of imperializing grammar that signifies the flow of ideas around gender relations to

7_{The flâneur is an icon in critical literature of European urban modernity; a product of great European cities of the late}

nineteenth century, he was essentially seen as an idle wanderer (bourgeois and exclusively male) who strolled around the city streets merely to observe the urban prospect. It is important to recognize the relevance of the flâneur in intersection with Orientalism and the extended role, as a bourgeois, European male strolling around colonized cities of the Global South and imposing European interpretations to the colonized populous. The following section looking into colonial histories as impetus of gendered spaces in the Global South will elaborate on the role of colonial historians as a type of Orientalist flâneurs.

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space from north to south (Peake & Rieker, 2013). The purpose of this section is to present alternative perceptions of the gendered city based on the influence of one of the most significant underlying factors in the conceptualization of cities of the Global South today: a colonial past.

In most parts of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, the colonial project was about seizing control of geographical areas to create new forms of spatial relations rested on the institution of boundaries and hierarchies (Rieker & Ali, 2008). Alongside the extraction of resources and the imposed production of new cultural imaginaries, the colonial era also involved the classification of people into categories based on race, culture and gender (Mbembe 2003, as cited in Rieker & Ali, 2008).

It is important to analytically disentangle the three spheres, but also recognize their

intersections within the debate as we focus on gender imperatives, specifically. Gender-based exclusionary practices of colonial global south cities are widely recognized today but the

majority of available research seems to be pivoted towards its complexities with prostitution and the biased treatment (social and spatial) of local versus European women within the profession. Despite the extremity of prostitution as a lens with which to look at gendered colonialist effects on cities, it highlights a structural bias of colonial knowledge in which historians, as Marghraoui writes, have tended to leave out women from their writings on colonial North Africa, ‘while at the same time concentrating mainly on the male elite world’ (Marghraoui, 2008). And when they do focus on women, the focus is usually presented through a colonialist gaze of European men and women, particularly with reference to North African and Arab women as seductive, mysterious and sexual beings and, as Julia Clancy-Smith put it, as ‘libertine Saharan beauties’ (Clancy-Smith, 1996; as cited in Marghraoui, 2008). This Orientalist trope is, ironically, a pitfall of

international and local literature, leading to what Kohl, a Lebanese feminist journal, refers to as a ‘paradoxical mixture of over and under-researching’ whereby particularly narrow ‘hot’ topics related to women tend to be over-explored, leaving many important positionalities unexplored (Kohl, 2018).

Of colonialized Morocco, Marghraoui recounts that when rural-urban migration rose in the 1930s and 1940s bringing a rise in prostitution to Casablanca with the large influx of displaced and impoverished peasants, the French government began a public debate to set intrusive policies of medical surveillance of poor women (Marghraoui, 2008). Through a process of colonial ‘sovereignty’ and in efforts to control the ‘disorder’ that was perceived to be created by incoming rural women, certain urban spaces were labeled as ‘safe’ and ‘sanitary’, to be distinguished from those which were dismissed as unsafe and unsanitary based on perceived imaginaries of the city’s poor women population. The same rhetoric of extreme exclusionary patterns is echoed in Susanne Dahlgren’s work on the British-occupied ocean port city of Aden, though in that instance gender segregation was enforced along racial lines (ibid.) Francesca Biancani’s work on Cairo under British rule gives a similar narrative of the surveillance and segregation of sex workers in the city based on nationality. The brothel area, remarkably situated in the center of Cairo and serving as part of the tourist attraction alongside hotels, was internally divided into two zones: the Wish-el-Birka area where the foreign prostitutes of Greek, Italian and French origins worked, and the Wass‘a which was dedicated to local sex workers (Biancani, 2012). In this case, although both foreign and native licensed women were subjected to medical check-ups, Biancani documents that while local prostitutes were strictly policed, having to report to the infirmary attached to the local police station and facing hospital confinement if found diseased, foreign sex workers could report to private practitioners and were expected to notify their Consular authorities and undergo medical treatment to their own volition if diseased, which rarely happened (ibid.) Marghraoui (2008) adequately frames this duality within a broader question about colonial control and representation:

Deconstructing the trajectories of gendered mobility in Cairo : lessons for urban policy

Deconstructing

the trajectories

of gendered mobility

in Cairo: lessons for urban policy

Thesis by: Lamia Abdelfattah

Student ID: 869620

Supervisor: Prof. Carolina Pacchi

Academic Year: 2017-2018

Politecnico Di Milano

School of Architecture, Urban Planning and Construction Engineering

Master of Science in Urban Planning & Policy Design

Abstract (in English)

Abstract (in Italian)

Acronyms

Table of Contents

List of Figures

Preface

Research Questions

Research Objectives

Research Methodology

Research Limitations

Research Contributions

Chapter 1:

Chapter 1:

Chapter 1 | Global discourses in feminist urbanism: A literature

review

1.1. Understanding the gendering processes of urban spaces through the

contributions of feminist urbanism