No City for Women?

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“How would our cities be different if not designed for and by fully grown, able bodied men but for people of all ages. abilities, gender, sexual preferences, class and caste?”

‘No City for Women?’ is a series of online events held for students of design & architecture from Chandigarh and Jaipur, to reimagine their cities from the lens of gender.

It culminates in a public symposium where the students will showcase their work, followed by a panel discussion on gender and city making.

During the 3 days of workshop that preceded the symposium, participants unpacked the concepts of gender-sensitive design, gender-mainstreaming and inclusivity from the lens of class, caste, age, abilities and gender. The complexity of gender equality in public spaces was delved into which might involve advocating for mixed spaces such as inclusive public spaces and gender neutral toilets, on one hand and on the other, creating dedicated spaces for women ranging from women-only metro and train coaches to dedicated play spaces for teenage girls.

Organized by the Alliance Française Chandigarh and French institute in India, the event has been designed by Social Design Collaborative and hosted as a part of the United Nations programming for 2021 under the label of Forum Generation Equality.

Register

  • Registrations are closed for this event

  • Free entry | Open to all

  • Language of event: English

Watch the trailer

Our partners

Social Design Collaborative is a Delhi based interdisciplinary design organization that works at a grassroots as well as policy level on issues of social justice from housing rights to gender equality.

About the panelists

Czaee Malpani is currently the Undergraduate Programme Coordinator for the B.Des Interior pathway at the Jindal School of Art ad Architecture and an Associate Professor, as well as the Deputy Director for the Jindal Centre for Social Design. Her work critically examines the intersections of Gender and (Modernist) architectural representations in the form of orthographic architectural drawings.

Claire Hancock is Professor of geography at Université Paris-Est Créteil (UPEC) and a member of the Lab’Urba. She has been researching gender issues in cities since the late 1990s, with fieldwork in Mexico City, Barcelona, Berlin and Paris.

Chris Blache is an urban anthropologist. She co-founded and co-manages Genre et Ville with Urban Designer Pascale Lapalud.  She is an expert in urban innovation and more specifically in strategies and tools to promote gender equality in the territories.

Hugo is a PhD candidate from EHESS, the School for Advanced Studies in Social Sciences, Paris. His study investigates the impact of urbanisation on socialisation in small cities in India: how do men and women develop friendships in different urban contexts, and how does it matter in their life? Hugo’s research also focuses on the representation of gender and cities in Indian cinemas.

Madhavi Desai is an architect, researcher, writer and a teacher. She was an adjunct faculty at CEPT University, Ahmedabad, India (1986-2018). She has had Research Fellowships from ICSSR, Delhi, the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture, MIT, USA, Sarai, Delhi and the Getty Foundation, USA. She is a also a founder member of Women Architects Forum.

Sarover Zaidi is a philosopher and a social anthropologist. She works at the intersections of critical theory, anthropology, art, architecture, and material culture studies. She has extensively worked on religious architecture and urbanism in the city of Bombay, and has previously worked on women’s health across rural India. Zaidi currently teaches at the Jindal School of Art and Architecture, Sonipat, India.

Dr. Anuradha Chatterjee is an Indian-born Australian feminist academic practitioner in architecture and design based in Australia and India. She has Dip. Arch from TVB School of Habitat Studies (1998), Master of Architecture (History and Theory of Architecture, 2000), and PhD in Built Environment (2008) from the University of New South Wales. Dr Chatterjee is Professor and Dean at Faculty of Design, Manipal University in Jaipur, and erstwhile Dean Academics at Avani Institute of Design.

Trained as an architect, geographer and feminist scholar, I am currently an Associate Professor of Humanities and Social Sciences at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Mohali (IISER Mohali). My research lies at the interface of feminist theory, urban and labour geography, and the emerging area of critical infrastructure studies. The regional context of my research is South Asia. I hold a dual PhD from Pennsylvania State University: in Geography and Women’s Studies, and have worked as a faculty member in the US and in India now for over 10 years.

Swati Janu is an architect, artist and writer based in Delhi. Her practice is rooted in social justice and human rights, combining grassroots engagement with policy advocacy. She is the Founder of the interdisciplinary practice Social Design Collaborative which was recently awarded the Beazley Design of the Year 2020 in Architecture. A graduate from School of Planning and Architecture, New Delhi, Swati also holds an MSc in Sustainable Urban Development from University of Oxford, UK

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