Gender Aspects of Urban Economic Growth and Development

Chant, Sylvia (1997) Working Paper No.137, United Nations University

World Institute for Development Economics Research, Helsinki, 52pp

Abstract

The urbanization process is frequently shaped by prevailing constructions of gender. The recognition of this phenomenon is vital both in diagnosis and policy terms. This paper aims at illustrating the importance of gender in three major related aspects of urban growth and development: (i) transformations in household structure; (ii) shifts in household survival strategies and; (iii) changing patterns of employment. Although urbanization is gendered in all parts of the developing world, variability in patterns and outcomes in different countries makes it difficult to identify particular ways in which policy interventions might diminish gender inequalities in urban environments. Besides this, the paper concludes that unless gender inequalities are attenuated in rural settings there is little scope to effect major improvements in existing disparities. Although the 1980s and 1990s have seen an increasing acknowledgement of women’s contribution to development, so far, policies which incorporate women into the development process have shown little concern about empowering women themselves.

The main arguments of this study are that urbanization and its outcomes are highly gendered; that the gendering of urbanization is highly variable between places (depending upon class, culture, economic conditions and so on); that it is difficult to consider gender aspects of urban growth and development without reference to household circumstances (and particularly intra-household dynamics); that the analysis of gender, household structures and household survival strategies has become even more important in recent times in the context of economic restructuring (for diagnoses of poverty and for policy purposes), and that detailed micro-level studies of gender, households and employment in urban areas are vital to dispense with assumptions that often give rise to inappropriate generalizations. Yet what these issues mean in a policy context, and how they translate into specific urban policies is complex. Although urbanization is gendered in all parts of the developing world, variability in patterns and outcomes in different countries makes it difficult to identify particular ways in which policy interventions might diminish gender inequalities in urban environments everywhere.

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