Planning urban struggles
Introduction
Feminist urbanism is a theory and social movement about the impact of the built environment on women.[1] The theory aims to understand what it means to be a woman in an urban space and what struggles and opportunities women encounter in these environments.[2] Advocates of feminist urbanism present a critical perspective of the patriarchal (sociology) and capitalist systems that have shaped and continue to shape architecture and urban planning, while having a negative impact on the lives of women. women.[3] Feminist urbanism also refers to the ways, both positive and negative, in which the built environment influences the relationships, freedoms, opportunities, mobility and daily activities of women. As urban environments continue to grow globally, feminist urbanism argues that it is necessary to understand the ways in which cultural, political and economic systems have limited and oppressed women to create a future built environment that is more equitable, inclusive, sustainable and enjoyable for all people.
History of women in urban environments
Care work and gender roles
Care work in the context of domestic environments, as defined by Silvia Federici[5].
Historically, the responsibilities of domestic and reproductive work have fallen exponentially on women. This unfair and unequal distribution of responsibilities has prevented women from pursuing goals and freedoms outside of domestic life.[6].
From the Stone Age to pre-industrial societies, women were responsible for childcare and other domestic activities such as farming, cooking, cleaning, and clothing-making, while men were dedicated to hunting and construction.[7] These divisions came from biological aspects that made children more dependent on women while men had stronger physical compositions that made other activities less risky for them. As nomadic civilizations began to settle, technological developments guided communities toward more complex systems of relationships, economics, and political organization, as well as greater diversification of service needs and labor sectors. Since women were the ones who could give birth and breastfeed, childcare remained disproportionately the responsibility of women, while men were increasingly freed from reproductive responsibilities and care work.[8][9] With the Industrial Revolution, rapid growth in settlements made the binary gender imbalance more dramatic, forcing women to limit their contribution to society to the limits of domestic environments.[10] Federici states that this Confinement became natural, as if domesticity were simply a condition and desire inherent to women.[11] The periods of this transition and strategies of oppression vary from country to country, but the spatial division between residential and socioeconomic centers and unequal empowerment between men and women remain at the root of unequal urban environments around the world.[12].