Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
South African cities are not designed for women
FROM inadequate pavements and few safe walking spaces to scarce public toilets and family facilities, South Africa’s cities were never designed with women in mind.
And, say the experts, it will take more than an influx of women into the engineering, construction and architectural industries to create inclusive cities. What is also needed, they say, is more opportunities for women to gain leadership roles in politics.
Astrid Haas, a policy director at the International Growth Centre, says women’s roles in urban life, and in African cities particularly, date back to colonial times. In those days, men found work in the mining and construction sectors, to which women had no access.
So in a bid to support themselves and their families, women started commercialising their domestic skills.
“Nowadays, much of this split in type of work remains – the limited number of formal sector jobs in African cities is usually taken up by men, while women tend to dominate in the informal services sector,” says Haas.
In Kampala, in Uganda, where Haas hails from, an estimated 70% of one-person businesses in the informal sector are run by women. In addition, they also do most of the non-paying domestic work, including child-care. Yet the design of many African cities does not take this difference in roles into account.
“For example, movement to and from a wage job may require an average of two trips a day, but moving between an informal job – such as in a market, childcare (if it exists) – and home can require many, smaller trips.
“Also, research has shown that not only are the highest number of trips in African cities undertaken by foot, most of those pedestrians are women. Yet many cities simply lack adequate pavements, which means pedestrians have to compete with motorised transport for their space on the road.”
It is no different in South Africa. “South Africa’s cities have not been built to suit the needs of women,” says Gugu Sithole-Ngobese, founding chairperson of Women in Planning SA.
One of the key areas in which planning and urban design has failed, particularly in this country, is in the area of “gender mainstreaming”.
“Gender mainstreaming is the practice of ensuring that all genders are accounted for equally in policy, legislation and resource allocation – in all areas and at all levels. In spatial planning, both urban and rural, it is about considering how different gender groups use public spaces.”
City planning needs to consider who is using the space, how many, how they use it, why they use it, and where. “With more than half of the population of South Africa being female, our country’s cities need to be planned with women in mind.”
Zeenat Ghoor, director at Aspire Consulting Engineering, says South African cities were designed based on apartheid principles. Neighbourhoods were decentralised and incorporated infrastructure to segregate by keeping different races and people of different income levels apart.
For women to feel safe and included in their cities, she says, they need to be able to use services and spaces in the public arena without concerns for their safety and move around easily and affordably.
Some of the major social ills facing South Africa include poverty, unemployment and inequality. Lerato Peu, executive director of urban development and planning at Merafong Local
City Municipality on the West Rand, says cities should be responsive in dealing with these challenges because they affect women more than men.
Even though all our cities pre-date democracy, she says it is “imperative” that authorities prioritise the continuous modelling of cities to suit current trends and social needs.
Peu says cities should not only be places to go to work, but should be usable by members of all income groups. Johannesburg and Cape Town are classic examples of two cities that accommodate residents of two extreme ends of the income spectrum.
“While Johannesburg is affordable, most residents are from lower-income groups and are often illegal occupants of buildings with zero to little tenure/ ownership. Cape Town, on the other hand, is unattainable for the average local.”
She also wants to see cities whose layout would expose criminal activity and offer high levels of public safety and interaction.
Haas says there is increasing evidence that when women become political leaders, governments are not only more inclusive but also better at delivering public services.
Having more women leaders means African cities will be more inclusive, not just for women but for everyone.