Abstract
“The city is an organised memory, and in history women are forgotten” Hannah Arendt The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 60 to 80 million couples worldwide currently suffer from infertility. According to The Indian Society of Assisted Reproduction, infertility currently affects about 10 to 14 percent of the Indian population, with higher rates in urban areas where one out of six couples is impacted. With increasing literacy rates (87% in 2018) among women in India, Women today are attracting higher paying jobs which are structured around busy schedules and tight deadlines. This in turn has led to sedentary lifestyles, increased consumption of tobacco, erratic meal schedules which in turn has led to health issues like diabetes, increased blood pressure and obesity. Indian Cities need to respond to this increase in health issues and stress among women by provided more recreational spaces which are accessible, safe and equitably distributed. UN Habitat’s recent report titled “Cities and Pandemics: Towards a More Just, Green and Healthy Future” point towards the increased health and well-being due to good access of urban greens. The ongoing CoViD-19 pandemic has brought to the forefront the existing inequalities in our cities and has also given rise to a greater degree of localisation due the reduced needs of long distance mobility. The pandemic has also given rise to new concepts of urbanism in the form of the “15-minute city” developed by Franco-Colombian scientist Carlos Moreno and popularised by Mayor Hidalgo for Paris. On closer analysis of the “15 minute city”, it is clear its implementation can lead to further ghettoisation of cities in the global south which have limited access to public transport and other amenities. It is thus important to rethink the “15 minute city” with a Gender inclusive lens. Ana Falu’s theoretical hypothesis for understanding gender in cities states that: • The city is not experienced or lived in the same way by men and women. • Urban assets are not equally accessible, neither equal in quality and supply to all citizens. • Due to these inequalities, women face great vulnerabilities than men. We use Ana Falu’s theoretical framework as a gender lens to understand distribution of open spaces using parameters such as per capita open space, proximity to open space, accessibility and safety. The city of Bangalore is considered as a case, a city with 22.2% women’s participation in labour (highest when compared to Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkatta). The research work will attempt comparative socio-spatial ward mapping with the above mentioned parameters. Finally, we highlight the provision of green spaces is inadequate mainly in newly developing peripheries which house a large number of working women. The study also points to the fact that much of the open spaces are not fully accessible. Addressing this challenge will require incentivising land owners with higher FSIs or other similar mechanisms in turn mandating them to provide larger area for public parks which are accessible to all. We argue that provisioning for open spaces in Indian cities need to go beyond the logics of per capita open space to spatial logics centered on access and proximity. Indian Cities have given women a sense of freedom and independence unlike its rural counterpart widely documented in Shilpa Phadke’s case study of Mumbai “Why Loiter?”. As Jane Jacobs said “Cities have the capability of providing something for everybody, only because, and only when, they are created by everybody.”, it is time women are included in creating our cities of the future.
