Most citizens know what they feel when I returned home alone or by passing through a narrow and unlurmed street. Many also know the feeling of not arriving in time to an appointment, while they push a baby cart, load the purchase bags and draw hundreds of obstacles along the way. The cities have not been thought for them, inequality is hidden in tiles and hinders female participation in public space. Therefore, urbanism with a gender perspective, whose pioneer in Spain, the architect Inés Sánchez de Madariaga, insists “that men and women make different uses of the city.”
The female population continues with the support of the care of small, sick and elderly. There are more than 1.3 million women who are responsible for people over six years of age with some disability, according to data from the National Institute of Statistics updated to March 2024. Mothers account for 8.97% of caregivers, parents 1.62%; The daughters 25.56% and the descendants 12.56%. They always multiply the figures, as in household chores, but they participate more and more similar to men in working life.
This means that they move more than them through the different points of the localities, such as the hospital, the day center, the supermarket, the nursery or the office. They cross great distances that subtract rest time. However, only about 30% of women have their own vehicle, according to the Spanish Union of Insurance Entities. They have less purchasing power and are the main users of public transport.
“They need adequate infrastructure to get everything easily,” insists the architect with the hope that an increase in comfort will also favor a more equitable distribution of tasks. Men usually move more from home to work and their recreational activities. The routes of both are very different.
The idea of 15 -minute citycontemplated in this type of urbanism, implies that residents can access essential services in a maximum of a quarter of an hour on foot, by bicycle or in public transport from their homes, according to the architect Verónica Benedet, which performs feminist projects.
Marta Ezquerecocha, Dr. at the University of Deusto and urban policy analyst with a gender perspective, defends the need to question the cities traditionally built with androcentric and capitalist perspectives, designed in productivity and not the quality of life. “We wanted to relegate us from public space and we need to recover our own autonomy in the streets,” he claims.
She is one of the youngest experts, as opposed to Sánchez de Madariaga, who has a long career and is a guest professor at Harvard University, in addition to the director of the UNESCO Gender Chair and Equality Policies of the Polytechnic of Madrid.
He discovered the subject women in architecture when he attended a master’s degree at Columbia University, in the United States, in 1989. He was caught up and when he returned to Spain, in 1995, he did not hesitate to work on it. “The urban planning departments were very masculinized. For them this was as if they told them in Chinese, something totally alien,” he recalls.
He participated in the drafting of the Law of Equality between women and men and the Land Law of Spain, both of 2007. The Supreme Court demands since 2018 that urban plans have gender impact reports, the problem is that most powers are autonomous and is not always fulfilled.
Gradually, some communities legislated this egalitarian look in their plans and currently already represent more than half: Basque Country, Valencian Community, Catalonia, Extremadura, Andalusia, Canary Islands, Balearic Islands, Navarra and Asturias. “Now he is booming,” celebrates the architect.
Accessibility and security are the main pillars of urbanism with a gender perspective. However, Sánchez de Madariaga insists that Spanish cities are very safe. “When we detect that a place is dangerous we stop going, we self -censure. Therefore, design and planning must contribute to reducing both the perception of lack of protection and the real insecurity of the spaces,” he explains.
An accessible city must have a good mobility network and needs to eliminate obstacles. Infrastructure influence female access to the work world. “At night in many cities public transport is non -existent. Who cleanses the factories, hospitals and shopping centers at dawn? Women,” says Ezquerecocha.
The doctor explains that a safe city has to offer good lighting with clean and careful streets to increase the feeling of tranquility. Public elevators must be transparent. “A principle of feminist urbanism is the idea of seeing and being seen,” he says after making it clear that “if there is a sexual assault, the fault is not of the light, but of the person who commits it.”
Model cities
Ezquerecocha comments that there are autonomies that implement very good practices. Basque Country is a pioneer in the matter. In the 1990s, urban women of women developed “maps of the forbidden city” to point out the critical points that caused insecurity. In 2016, he incorporated the gender perspective into urban policies and financed municipalities such as Irún or Astigarraga to carry out measures.
Currently, Bilbao works in the “school roads”, an initiative that seeks that children can go to educational centers autonomously and safely. In 2020 Vitoria developed a sustainable mobility plan with the electric bus, connecting the peripheral areas of the city.
Barcelona is another good example, implemented the supermanzana concept. It consists of perimeter closure to the rolled traffic from several streets to reduce the presence of motor vehicles and prioritize the pedestrian use of space and green areas. It has a feminist urban planning, Col·lectiu Punt 6, which received several awards.
At the international level, experts stand out. Created an entire neighborhood with a gender perspective, the Sestadt Aspern district. In the Arctic strip of Sweden, part of the public land has heating, which facilitates that wheelchairs and carts do not get stuck in the snow.
“If regional governments focus on mass tourism and economist they go against these initiatives,” explains Ezquerecocha. He regrets that the Community of Madrid does not collect any type of urban regulations of this style and criticizes great differences in cleaning the streets “of Vallecas and the Barrio de Salamanca”.
Last September the president, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, mocked this concept of urbanism, mentioned by more Madrid: “I have been told that there must be a feminist real estate construction, we are going to the maximum ridiculous,” he snapped.
However, the City of Alcorcón has begun to undertake initiatives. “We have told the promoters that they have to wear the violet glasses so that our neighbors are empowered in the street and, in general, they have taken it well,” says the general coordinator of Urban Agenda of the town, Eulalia Moreno de Acevedo.
He wants to avoid the dispersion of services and foster players and day centers. He works with the UNESCO Chair in Gender Matters to pedestrianize and guarantee vision to more than 10 meters. Also with UN Habitat in a pilot project called cities that are overcome.
Alcorcón is a municipality crossed by the C-5 train line and the A-5 road. To connect the areas of the city that are separated there are catwalks, but they have a lot of transit and are narrow. Therefore, he will reform them with the intention of “avoiding mousetracks and favoring that a woman who takes her son of the arm while accompanying a dependent person has easy access.”
Moreno de Acevedo also intends to eliminate the dead ends and urban recesses. In two months, “Black Point Maps” of the city will begin to be elaborated: “Just as you have to take the optical fiber to the sites, the gender perspective must also be transferred.”
Egalitarian look at home
Benedet adds that this reality must also be present within homes. In 2022 the Basque Country approved a decree of minimum habitability conditions with a guide of good egalitarian practices in homes.
“The kitchens cannot be narrow or located in marginal places to prevent only a person from which the woman will load with the task. We must not hierarchize, the rooms must have a minimum of 10 square meters, with the same size each, to avoid inequalities and adapt to the different family models,” he explains.
In the Spanish houses it costs to see specific spaces to store, lay or wash clothes, which forces juggling. Ezquerecocha is clear that building with a gender perspective is the future: “We face a reactionary wave. Therefore, our work must continue with more force.”
For more updates, visit our homepage: NewsTimesWire
