Women in Cities: Prosperity or Poverty? A Need for Multi-dimensional and Multi-spatial Analysis

Urbanisation is often celebrated as a gateway to expanded economic social and political opportunities for women, as well as greater possibilities for independent upward mobility. This is one plausible reason why, in the context of increased fetishisation of the city as a generator of wealth and well-being, the issue of gender and urban prosperity has come to the fore, being the theme of UN-Habitat’s State of Women in Cities 2012/13 (UN-Habitat, 2013). Yet while not denying that urban women enjoy some advantages over their rural counterparts, barriers to female ‘empowerment’ remain widespread in towns and cities of the Global South, especially among the urban poor. Indeed, that several gender inequalities and injustices persist in urban environments is highlighted all the more when considering prosperity in conjunction with poverty. An analysis encompassing both phenomena reveals the frequently stark contrasts between what women contribute to wealth in cities through their paid and unpaid labour, their endeavours in building and consolidating shelter, and their efforts to work around shortfalls in essential services and infrastructure, and the often limited rewards they reap in respect of equitable 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 (Chant, 2013).