Representation of women in the urban field: "Gender is part of how we make, understand, experience and research cities"

This week we are talking about women. You worked on the Gendered Geographies of Gentrification (GGG), which is the basis of your current theoretical work. Could you say more about it? 

Gendered Geographies of Gentrification was my post-doctoral comparative research on women's experiences of displacement in gentrifying neighbourhoods of Amsterdam and Istanbul, funded by H2020 Marie Curie Individual Grants. Working with Prof Dr Loretta Lees, based at Leicester University, I conducted a feminist ethnography in gentrifying areas of Istanbul and Amsterdam, focusing on the gendered experiences and impacts of gentrification and displacement on low-income women living and working in the neighbourhoods. Later, using my allocated research time at IHS, I looked again at the data I collected with the lens of social reproduction theory, which provided a fresh theoretical framework on the nexus of social reproduction and displacement. 

What is your motivation to incorporate a feminist perspective in your work? 

"Gender is a constitutive aspect of how we make, understand, experience and research cities. That is why it should not stay at the margins of urban theory and research. In my current work, I approach displacement and gentrification from a feminist perspective that underlines the mutual constitution of gender and space as the cities transform unevenly. "

Gentrification facilitates the social reproduction of the middle classes, offering commodified services for housing, food, health, care, entertainment. It also provides amenities such as proximity to the city centre, security, and walkability. At the same time, it makes the social reproduction of lower classes difficult, if not impossible. 

What are your findings? 

During my post-doctoral field research, many low-income women told me about the material and emotional labour they had to bear to continue the disrupted everyday life under the shadow of displacement threat. Women felt socially and physically unsafe with decreasing social cohesion in the neighbourhood as neighbours were leaving. Some had to start working, others economized on expenses to compensate for the economic burden displacement brought about.

"They managed the emotional budget of households and communities like calming down their angry spouses after a meeting with the municipality, emotionally and materially supporting a neighbour who got evicted."

Some people were working to pull resources to the neighbourhood that was suffering from deteriorating infrastructures of social reproduction in the community. Life's work under the threat of displacement is not easy to shoulder at the household and community level, and both cis- and transgender women were doing that disproportionately. 

"Based on conversations with women on life's work under the threat of displacement, I discussed that gentrification and displacement function as tools to displace the crisis of social reproduction onto low-income populations increasing the material and affective burdens of social reproduction, which disproportionately fall on women's shoulders."

I believe in making visible the material and affective aspects of reproductive social work required to survive gentrification and displacement. This would feed into feminist praxis to contest gendered dispossessions involved in the process of gentrification and displacement in specific and in uneven urban development processes at large. 

What are you doing further to incorporate a feminist perspective in the work that you and other colleagues do at IHS?

"We pursue several ongoing works at IHS that embrace a feminist urban perspective in the way we teach, research, and advocate urban development." 

First, with my dear colleagues Carolina Lunetta and Maartje van Eerd, we ran an elective course entitled Gender in Urban Theory, Practice and Research. Students could learn about why gender matters for urban development, theory and research and how to produce policies, research and knowledge from a feminist perspective. We experimented with creative learning methods such as storytelling. Students happily expressed why gender mattered for them as professionals, their urban experiences, and their research. This was a great experience for our students, who enjoyed the course and learned about the connection between gender and urban. 

Second, we take gender at the heart of our training activities for urban professionals. A good example for this: In May 2022, with my colleagues Carolina Lunetta, Elina Makousiari and our local partner Angelika Namdar from Anton de Kom University, Suriname, we will be running a Refresher Course on "Gender-inclusive planning in Suriname: an intersectional approach to strategic planning". I will contribute to some sessions on urban space and gender, intersectionality etc. 

What future steps do you think would help integrate the feminist perspective in the ways urban development is done, taught and researched?

This is a big question. I think we need to start with making visible, talking, teaching, and researching intersectional inequalities involved in how we make, experience, understand, and research cities. We also need to start talking about gender inequalities in urban development.

"It is very crucial not to attach gender as a patchwork on what we are already doing but to approach it as a constitutive element in the production of urban space, knowledge and policy."

Last, but not least, how does it feel to be a woman working in the urban development field from your perspective?

No need to say women and many other disadvantaged groups are discriminated against in everyday urban development fields and academia. I, for sure, took my own portion. Here I would rather talk about how I transformed the discrimination I experienced, or millions face every day, into a life-long, challenging and exciting mission.

"This mission is to engage in a feminist urban academic praxis to make visible and contest intersectional dispossessions involved in city making and urban knowledge production."

I am happy to pursue this mission right now at IHS. It has a great potential to change the urban development field in very just and feminist ways with its education, training, advocacy and research. Let's not forget its outreach to countless alumni trained and passionate to make cities work all around the world.