Shaping the Equiverse: Building Inclusive Urban Spaces for Women in South Asia
March 6, 2024
Event Recap
The roundtable, ‘Shaping the Equiverse: Building Inclusive Urban Spaces for Womenin South Asia’, took place on 6 March 2024 at the India International Centre in New Delhi.
It was co-organised by TalentNomics India and the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung’s (KAS)
Regional Economic Programme Asia (SOPAS). The primary objective of this roundtable is
to identify actionable issues hindering women’s equal access to education, work, andwell-being in urban spaces.
Ms Ipsita Kathuria, the Founder and CEO of TalentNomics India, gave a welcome speech.
She welcomed both speakers and participants, and called for actions that bring about
necessary changes for building inclusive urban spaces for women. It was followed byanother welcome speech by Mr Christian Echle, KAS’ Head of the Department Asia andPacific. He emphasised the importance of women and marginalised groups’ roles inshaping inclusive urban surroundings and thanked TalentNomics for their cooperation
with KAS.
Mr Suparno Banerjee, the Expert in Digital Infrastructure and Smart Cities, Board
Member, TalentNomics gave a keynote speech. Below are the points he made during hisspeech:- Context: More than 57% of the global population are living in cities today, and theshare is growing. It is because cities offer people more job opportunities andbetter services. On the other hand, urbanisation have negative effects on people’s
livelihood as well. Therefore, it is necessary to work on urban spacetransformation.
- Framework for planning urban space transformation: A framework of SMART isuseful in developing a plan for urban space transformation. SMART stands forSpecific (setting clear goals), Measurable, Attainable, Relevant (focused on theissues, opportunities of the citizens or the target group), and Time bound(execution within a specific timeline). Effective prioritisation of transformation
projects can be done by setting goals of urban space transformation win
connection to public values (such as inclusivity and sustainability) and citizens’
needs (such as safety and quality of live).
- As transformation is a collective project, all stakeholders should be encouraged tothink of what they can do, where they position themselves, and how they cancollaborate better with others to bring about the changes they wish to make.
In the Reality and Reflections session, Dr Meeran Chadha Borwankar, the former
Director General of Police, and Ms Gita Mittal, a retired judge, Former Chief Justice, J&K
HC were invited to share current situations in India in terms of gender-based challenges
and discriminations from the perspectives of the police and court respectively. Below are
the major points shared by the two speakers during the session:1

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Harassment, stoking, violence against women are still common problems andpreventing women from moving freely. Toilet facilities for women on streets,especially, women farmers, and girls in school are not sufficient. Jail facilities are
not reflecting basic needs for women prisoners. Failures in meeting women’s
needs in public spaces limit not only their mobility but also their freedom of choice.
Speaking of justice is not very realistic as the first step. If girls want to claim theirright to decide for themselves, they need to speak up to their own parents. The
first step is to recognise the existing discrimination. The second step is to think
how to fight against it on different levels, such as family, community, state, andcountry.
Two barriers in accessing justice for women: Language difference (for example forTamil speaking population) and the attitude of the people working in the justicesystem. Those who work for the system are so reluctant to work with cases related
to sexual harassment.
Policewomen currently consists 12% of the entire police officers in India, which isan improvement in comparison with almost no policewomen in 1981. A slow
change is taking place in a sense that it has become more natural that womenpolice officers get promoted to leadership positions.
However, there are cases where gender discrimination on the field level prevents
girls and women from prosecuting attackers. The change must reach the field level.
To bring about the necessary change, women must be involved in the planning ofurban spaces. It is problematic that it has been men-driven.

The Session 1 on Gender Inclusive Mobility was opened by the moderator of thesession, Mr Laghu Parashar, Transport Specialist at the World Bank. The discussion wasenriched by two discussants: Ms Mitali Nikore, the Founder of Nikore Associates and aConsultant at the World Bank India, and; Mr Ashish Gajurel, a Transportation Expertfrom Nepal. The bullet points below summarise the discussion during the session:- A gender perspective has been missing in urban planning, which implies that 50%of the population’s perspective is missing. Public transportations built without thegender perspective are insufficient to serve the wider population. As availability offunctioning public transportations mean more than just mobility for women, it isimportant to have a realistic imagination and input from women in the planningstage.
- In the planning of public transportations, we need to shift from building them for
simple numbers to planning for different groups with different needs. This called
for gender disaggregated data collection and analysis. Successful provision oftransit system for women would bring them better education and job
opportunities as well as better emotional wellbeing.
- Where does India stand in the transformation process? It was a big step forwardthat the gender mainstreaming is widely accepted now in the general population
and among the ministries. To scale up the transformation, more gender budgetingand collaboration across sectors must be done. A more gender-inclusive

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community structure must be invented as well. The transformation has been
started in the national level and it needs to reach the community level as well.
When designing gender-inclusive public transportations, providing just a few seatsin a bus, for example, does not solve the actual issue. A wholistic approach should
be taken to tackle the core problems that women face in public transportations.
For example, making public transportation free for women is not sufficient, as it
must be safe for women as well.
To promote changes for more inclusive spaces, it is advisable to prepare goodarguments to convince pragmatists. We should always ask: Are the investments
adequate for what we want to achieve? Data collection and analysis is necessary
for building such arguments.
Much budget has been spent to install CCTVs and other facilities. To make use of
the limited resources, a better use of the existing facilities should be imagined. Incombination with data collection and analysis, this also contributes tosustainability of the transformation.

In Session 2 on Gender Inclusive Public Infrastructure, Ms Sarika Chakravarty, the Team
Lead, UrbanShift Country Project of NIUA moderated the discussion which was joined byMs Kalpana Biswanath, the Founder, Safetipin, and Ms Farah Kabir, the Country
Director of ActionAid Bangladesh. Below are the takeaways from the discussion:---

The main question should be: How do we bring the gender lens to all aspects ofurban planning? Every policy formulation must be nuanced by the genderperspective.
Current challenges such as inadequate infrastructure arise from and exacerbatedby the large population size. Rapid and unplanned growth of cities leads toinformal urbanisation (slums). This reduces resilience of the cities in times ofclimate change and disasters.
Studies have shown that sexual harassment is a significant problem for women.
The next step is to lobby for the official recognition of the problem backed up by
the data so that necessary fundings become available for transformation. In
addition to tackling violence and harassment, the care economy needs
restructuring. Currently, the burden of care falls mainly on women and ispreventing women from doing other activities. Finally, women need to sit at thetable where the planning of urban spaces take place. Effective changes are madeon the municipal level.

The final part of the conference was devoted for a brainstorming session on policy
recommendations. The participants were divided into two groups. Intensive
discussions took place among the participants in respective groups. A speaker fromeach groups presented what had been discussed in their group. The ideas exchangedin the session will be consolidated into a few focused policy recommendations later.

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