Great point! I would also love to hear about any examples which other participants could provide regarding an understanding of elderly women’s experiences in urban areas and related policy responses. I agree it is a group commonly left out of policy agendas and policy making processes.

I have a brief example relating to the comment from Wikigender below regarding the gender roles in the household and disproportionate share of unpaid work experienced by school going girls. An initiative of World Vision and World Bicycle Relief’s ‘Buffalo Bikes’ targeted school going girls in several African countries who’s class attendance struggles due to additional workload in the home coupled with a long commute to school (also factors of safety during a long commuting walk). The initiative termed ‘BEEP’ equipped girls with sturdy bikes to undertake school commutes and errands – details at the below link for South Africa. It had started out as a rural focused initiative but I understand plans for the future are increasingly focused on urban fringes. It’s a very simple initiative with nice clear outcomes. Doesn’t quite directly tackle issues of gender norms in the household but has been quite successful in maintaining girl’s attendance in schools (which may ultimately address norms via a different route!)
http://qhubeka.org/2013/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/BEEP-digital-copy-131120a.pdf

Are there any projects that people know about that directly target the needs of older women? Any evaluations?

It would be great to learn of any urban planning programmes that have taken a gender lens or have worked to mainstream gender in their planning and implementation.

A particularly vulnerable group in urban areas are elderly women, who are often more than men, and are also likely to slip under the radar. Women, for example, often continue working far into old age. Older women also play critical roles in undertaking unpaid domestic and care work, especially when younger female members of households or communities take up paid work. Are there any concrete examples of programmes taking, for example, elderly women’s experiences of urbanisation and cities
into consideration?

Additionally, the ‘private’/domestic spheres of urban life should not be left out of the discussion. The urban economy, for example, should be conceptualised as comprising those income-generating activities in the formal and informal economy, as well as unpaid care work; especially as women continue to undertake larger proportion of unpaid care work even when engaged in paid work.

The continual learning from practice within the Programme has informed the ‘Safer Cities Approach’, which is the model of engagement used by the Programme in supporting partner cities. The Approach typically begins with exercises of city diagnostics to analyse the local safety and crime prevention context. It is here that the safety audit tool has been applied. Our experience with the safety audit tool is that it can be a powerful way to (i) generate data to a degree that is meaningful at the city level and (ii) acts as a means to work with local communities, groups and organisations to capacity build on issues of urban safety and gender and also empower such groups with accessible data. Undertaking the audit process with groups who typically experience the city differently generates rich data and also a very valuable dialogue or purposes of policy making.

In addition to the undertaking of audits and related activities of capacity development, institutionalisation of data etc, victimisation surveys are also carried out which adds an additional more qualitative layer to the diagnostic process. Such surveys also allow for deeper analyses of gender specific issues in the urban safety context.

It is on the basis of diagnostics and as such a baseline of evidence – that we can begin to work with municipalities towards the design and implementation of an Urban Safety and Crime Prevention Strategy.

Another example of this is the Safetipin app, developed in India but recently launched in Nairobi. By using data generated from crowd sourcing, the app identifies “safe” areas for women. http://safetipin.com/

I wonder if there are any programmes coming out of the private sector focusing on providing women with access to new information technologies, such as cell phones, to support women’s agency or empowerment opportunities?

– 90% of women feel safer and 85% feel more independent when they have a cellphone;
– a cellphone is perceived as a productivity tool by businesswomen. More than 50% of them have used a mobile phone to earn additional income.

Initiatives like Weena of Moov Togo push women to have a recognisable place in the digi-worlds of their communities. Such initiatives ought to be saluted so more mobile companies see the positive impact they can have on communities through initiatives that aim to close the gender gap.

Sources:

Women & Mobile: A Global Opportunity (GSMA, 2013) – http://www.gsma.com/mobilefordevelopment/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/GSMA_Women_and_Mobile-A_Global_Opportunity.pdf

Connected Women Case Study Weena: Moov’s value proposition for the women of Togo – http://pdf.usaid.gov/pdf_docs/PA00KSH3.pdf

Hilary, UN-Habitat’s Safer Cities Programme uses gender safety audits to identify where women feel unsafe. Would you be able to share with us some more information on this?

Nothing surprising: Women Feel Less Safe Than Men in Many Developed Countries!
But gender disparities vary widely across countries: In Algeria, for example 66% of men feel safe walking alone at night in the city where they live, compared to only 32% of women: an impressive gender gap of 34 percentage points. Intesrestingly, while more and more men feel safe, the share of women is unfortunately stagnated.
In Yemen, 56% of women and 80% of men feel safe. The gender gap in the SSA region is 7 percent points compared to 14 in the MENA region.

Thanks for the comment. SDG 11 offers the development a new avenue to making cities more inclusive for women and girls. This brings us to a set of our discussion questions on what works:

What are examples of policies, programmes or initiatives to tackle gender barriers that women and girls face in Africa’s urban environment?

What are some proven best practices to promote women’s and girl’s voices in urban governance and planning?

Would any of our participants be able to share proven best practices? Feel free to post links to documents or other sites where necessary.