How do we create gender equality in our cities (and suburbs, villages or coastal resorts)? This is a question urban lawyers, planners and designers are increasingly asking as more evidence comes to light about how women use spaces differently (travelling more on foot, for example, than by driving), how girls use playgrounds (wanting spaces to congregate and listen to music or dance rather than skateboard or play football) and the risks to people of all genders from violence. Some women are particularly affected – if they wish to wear religious clothing in some jurisdictions for instance – or if they are homeless, sleeping in public spaces. This week’s seminar considers how law can produce gendered spaces either by intervening, or by not intervening, in existing social, cultural and spatial patterns.
- Public Sector Equality Duty & Equality Impact Assessments
Equality Act 2010, s149
House of Commons Library, Briefing Paper Number 06591, 8 July 2020, The Public Sector Equality Duty and Equality Impact Assessments (read generally)
Sandra Fredman ‘The public sector equality duty’ (2011) I40(4) Industrial Law Journal 405-427
Dulgheriu and another v Ealing London Borough Council v National Council for Civil Liberties (trading as Liberty) [2020] 1 WLR 609
Optional for background on the legal context: Landmark Chambers lecture ‘Equality Law for Planners’ slides and video
- Urban Gender Equality
URBACT, (2019) Gender equal cities (if limited for time, just Chapter 5).
Leslie Kern, Feminist City: Claiming Space in a Man-Made World (2019, Verso Press, on Solo), chapter 5 ‘City of Fear’.
Tracey Sagar, ‘Public nuisance injunctions against on-street sex workers?’ (2008) 5 Criminal Law Review 353-369
Teela Sanders and Keith Soothill ‘The policing of pleasure: “What kind of police service do we want?” (2018) 21(5) Journal of Housing Law 95-101
Susannah Walker & Imogen Clark Make Space for Girls: Everything you need to know in one (relatively) easy documentDecember 2020
Optional
Susana Torre ‘Claiming the Public Space: The Mothers of Plaza de Mayo’ from Diana Agrest, Patricia Conway and Leslie Kanes Weisman (eds), The Sex of Architecture (1996) available as Chapter 19 of Gender space architecture : an interdisciplinary introduction Barbara Penner, Iain Borden and Jane Rendell (available on Solo).
TCPA, (2019) Beyond Box-Ticking A short guide to meaningfully assessing Local Plan policy impacts on equality and inclusion(generally on inclusive planning)
Kristen Day, ‘Feminist Approaches to Urban Design’ Companion to Urban Design (Routledge, 2011)
Jennifer Gardner and Larissa Begault, ‘How Better Urban Planning Can Improve Gender Equality’, (2019) Behavioural Scientist
- Public Space and Homelessness
Tilly Rubens and Kate Moss ‘The impact of the Homelessness Reduction Act 2017 on women survivors who have experienced domestic abuse – Part 1’ (2018) 21(3) Journal of Housing Law 57-62
Optional
Rionach Casey, Rosalind Goudie & Kesia Reeve (2008) ‘Homeless Women in Public Spaces: Strategies of Resistance’, Housing Studies, 23:6, 899-916
Edith England (2021): ‘”This is how it works here”: the spatial deprioritisation of trans people within homelessness services in Wales’, (2021) Gender, Place & Culture 1-38
- Religion and Public Space
SAS v France (43835/11) (2015) 60 E.H.R.R. 11; [2014] 7 WLUK 38 (ECHR (Grand Chamber))
Belcacemi v Belgium (37798/13) unreported 11 July 2017 (ECHR)
Mohammad Mazher Idriss, ‘Criminalisation of the burqa in the UK’ Journal of Criminal Law 2016, 80(2), 124-137 (on Westlaw)
Jasper Doomen, ‘A veiled threat: Belcacemi and Oussar v Belgium’ Ecclesiastical Law Journal 2018, 20(2), 190-200 (on Westlaw)
(Entirely optional) Podcasts
American Planning Association podcast, “Feminist City” Author Leslie Kern on Envisioning More Equitable Urban Spaces
Feminism in India podcast How Accessible Are Our Public Spaces For Women With Disability? Ft. Nidhi Goyal
Skylines podcast ‘Sex and the City’ with Caroline Criado-Perez, Lauren Elkin, Sarah Coughlan and Marissa Santikarn