Promoting Gender Responsive Services and Spaces Towards Inclusive and Safe Cities

This panel discussion “Promoting Gender Responsive Services and Spaces towards Inclusive and Safe Cities” will illustrate the direct connection between public services, public spaces and gender inequality, looking specifically at women’s access to their right to the city. It will recommend actions and measures for an effective gender responsive urban agenda for the next 20 years, with sustainable and safe cities. It will address the urgent steps needed to deliver universal, equitable, affordable, and accessible, gender responsive public infrastructure, recognizing them as central to gender equality and guaranteeing women’s right to the city –including in ending violence against women in public and urban spaces. It will also look at decision-making on service delivery and urban planning –including how policy making, and financing must include women’s full and equal participation and ownership as full and equal citizens, as well as that of wider civil society; and the need to address all barriers to equitable access to quality gender responsive public services, including the privatization of public services, which not only cause further social exclusion but also increase the care burden on women in sustaining their families and households. It aims to promote the idea of public spaces as common goods that should not only build popular and solidarity economies (including through support for and protection of informal workers), but also actively recognize the multiple expressions of citizenship. This event will be held as high level discussion panel and followed by an open discussion over the need to promote a gender responsive public services and spaces towards an effective new urban agenda. The panel will include eminent keynote speakers from ActionAid, Huairou Commission, Public Services International, Red Mujer y Habitat, REDEH, UCLG, a leader of the Brazilian waster pickers movement, WIEGO, Women in Cities International, Women Constituency Group from GAP.