The Feminist City

The Feminist City

Webinar on Wednesday 15 April 2020 3:00 PM CET.

Click on this link to join the event: https://zoom.us/j/365649119

COVID-19 affects men and women differently. Firstly, women may face a heightened risk of exposure to the virus as they make up large parts of the health workforce and that the majority of caregivers, at home and in our communities, are also women. Globally, women are more likely to lose their jobs than men. In many countries, women's participation in the labour market is often in the form of informal or temporary employment. Additionally, existing trends point to less access to sexual and reproductive health and a rise in domestic violence during the crisis.

The current outbreak highlights, even more, the gender and social inequalities built in our cities, homes, and neighbourhoods, and the need to find strategic responses that have at their core a commitment to women. It is an opportunity to imagine and create a city that guarantees women's equitable and affordable access to the goods, public services and opportunities, that incorporate the needs of women.

This event will be a conversation with the feminist geographer Leslie Kern, on the female urban experience. The session will propose an alternative vision of the feminist city, based on the realities and critiques  to the foundations of our urban spaces, because as Kern wrote, “once we begin to see how the city is set up to sustain a particular way of organizing society — across gender, race, sexuality, and more — we can start to look for new possibilities.”

Leslie Kern is an associate professor of geography and environment, and Director of Women’s and Gender Studies at Mount Allison University. She is the author of Sex and the Revitalized City: Gender, Condominium Development, and Urban Citizenship and Feminist City: Claiming Space in a Man-Made World.

in conversation with Giulia Maci, Urban Specialist,  Cities for Women Programme at Cities Alliance