Chapter 1 : Introduction

According to world health organization Gender refers to the characteristics of women, men, girls and boys that are socially constructed. This includes norms, behaviours and roles associated with being a woman, man, girl or boy, as well as relationships with each other. As a social construct, gender varies from society to society and can change over time. We have a long history of patriarchal society where women considered as less human than men. They being restricted from basic human rights like education, property, expression etc. even many time in general life and literature they don’t have their own identity, for example in the novel ‘Of Mice and Men’ by John Steinbeck in 1937, there is only one female character Curley’s wife, and in the whole novel not at once her name being mentioned, she always mentioned as Curley’s wife. So as we can see the gender inequality in social scenarios, women never had same respect and importance in society as men. About identity, in 21st century we still 50% of the time women pronounced as Miss or Mrs, when Ms should be used for every woman. And the introduction goes on with D/O or W/O with a man’s name, as there is no identity of your without a concerned man’s name. Moving forward to responsibilities and value it is estimated that women do 75% of the world’s total unpaid care work. In India, women spend 299 minutes a day on unpaid domestic services while men spend 97 minutes, according to the 2019 NSS report on time use. This inequality has a direct correlation with participation in the formal economy. Since we have persistent gender bias in urban economics, inadequate infrastructure, violence against women in public places, and inadequate representation, Cities as public organization have an important role to establish gender equality. The planning school of McGill University define urban planning as follows- “ Urban planning can be considered as technical and political process concerned with the welfare of people, control of the use of land, design of the urban environment including transportation and communication networks, and protection and enhancement of the natural environment.” There are some factors that affect the gender ratio of user, like fear of violence unequal public amenities, inadequate public transport and lighting, etc.

Poor families live on a countable distance from city centre due to the affordability of housing. And have to travel in early morning and late evening hours for job and educational purpose (long travel time to cover the distance). Inadequate lighting , insufficient public transport and improper law enforcement, makes the daily travel uncomfortable and unsafe, specially poor women and girls suffers the most as the stereotype count them weak and they become target of crime. Urban planning largely ignores gender specific experiences, needs, and concerns particularly with respect to poor women and girls. (Action Aid, 2012) To design and planning for every gender we have to simply understand the world from both the genders, the next chapter is focusing on some gender inequality issues we witness in everyday life.