It's just about gender
Socio-ecological transformation from gender and intersectional perspectives
This summer, the transdisciplinary working group Gender and Spatial Transformation had the opportunity to participate in the AESOP conference 2024 “Game Changer? Planning for just and sustainable urban regions” at Science Po in Paris. From July 8 to July 10, 2024, the Paris Congress aimed on examining a key question at the heart of the multiple ongoing transitions: what exactly constitutes a game changer?
Together with the international working group “Gender and Climate-Just Cities and Urban Regions” (ARL) the Forum jointly organised a special session titled “It's just about gender. Socio-ecological transformation from gender and intersectional perspectives”. The main goal of this session was to address the lack of consideration of gender relations and intersectionality in debates on sustainable spatial development and to highlight the added value of these perspectives for planning socio-ecological transformations. Beyond the thematic contributions from the fields of urban economy, climate change, transformation of infrastructure systems and mobility the session contributed to the reflection and reformulation of sustainable urban regions. The session was chaired by Ulrike Sturm (Lucerne university of Applied Sciences and Arts) and Tanja Mölders (University of Freiburg).
Katharina Kapitza (ARL), Miriam Kienesberger (University of Freiburg) and Tanja Mölders opened the session by exploring how intersectional gender perspectives can enlighten the debates on planning for sustainability transformations. Jeff Turner (University of Leeds) addressed the field of mobility by presenting tools and protocols for integrating gender aspects in mobility planning. With their research on compatibility of paid work and care work in urban development, Sarah Mente and Johanna Niesen (TU Braunschweig) focussed on planning innovations as game changers in suburbia. Sybille Bauriedl (Europa-Universität Flensburg) deepened the analysis of economic perspectives by critically examining gender justice and transformation in concepts of the donut economy, whereas Meike Spitzner (Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy) concluded by focussing on emancipatory and sufficient livelihoods through gender-responsive urban planning.
The subsequent plenary discussion was dedicated to the question of good examples of gender-just planning practice, but at the same time emphasised the need for a theoretical and analytical focus on gender relations and intersectionality in planning, which enables to identify contradictions and conflicting goals in social-ecological transformations as well as patriarchal and colonial structures in planning.
You can find the presentations from the session here:
