World Habitat Day sends message that habitat is a gender issue

By Inge Komardjaja

BANDUNG (JP): This year's World Habitat Day on Oct. 4 carries the message "Cities for All". It reminds urban planners and managers that women and men, girls and boys, from all walks of life and different backgrounds have equal rights to enjoy the access and use of a city's infrastructure and public buildings.

The theme is self-explanatory and implies the notion that the access and use of a city should not discriminate against any segment of the population. This ideal is far from reality, particularly when the user of the habitat, the living environment of human beings, becomes a gender issue.

Planners and designers seem to ignore or do not consider the fact that men and women use and experience habitat in different ways according to the roles and tasks they perform. This difference, along with the complexities of social, economic and political overtones, is reflected in the spatial organization of the city.

At the outset, it must be made clear about the difference between women and gender as the interchangeable use of the terms produce great confusion. Physical features make women different from men, so the term women and men bear a biological meaning.

The concept of gender is not based on sex and biology, but has a social meaning. It refers to the social relations between women and men that are constructed by aspects of history, economy, social class, ethnicity and culture of the region where they come from. A gender perspective recognizes the different roles, interests, needs and relations between women and men. As such, it is essential to integrate a gender perspective into the planning and architectural design of a city.

Historically, human habitat has been divided into two parts, private and public, on a basis of a traditional segregation of women's reproductive work and men's productive work.

The private sphere was the cave, shelter or later, the physical building of a house, the site for protection from natural phenomena and human intruders and also the place for family life and domestic chores.

As reproductive workers, women have been caregivers and householders, and thus the house and its immediate surroundings become their domain. Beyond the house, the environment provides wider social and economic opportunities and is more open for natural and human invasion.

These challenges are to be faced appropriately by men who are considered more rational and physically stronger than women are.

Men have been the productive worker and are used to being the prime breadwinner of the family. Opportunities for paid employment, extending job relations and socializing occur in the public sphere. It is, therefore, acceptable if men spend a lot of time outside the house without their family.

The public environment has been a vital part of a man's life. The public formal sector of work becomes more significant than private informal household work. This principle has made an impact on the creation of the built environment, where the public environment due to its economic value was assumed more significant than the private domain.

In a patriarchal society, urban planners and designers tend to use the standard of the physical capabilities of an average young and healthy male adult to build the habitat. Those who do not fit this standard have to adjust or avoid the use of an environment that is not easy to negotiate.

Examples can be noticed from a city's roads that are constructed to accommodate the mechanical mobility of motor vehicles, which are mostly driven by men. Not much is done considerably to facilitate pedestrians.

City planners are more concerned with the smooth flow of traffic than the safety and comfort of walking. In traditional markets, vendors rent small spaces to display and sell items. They remain stationary in their stalls, whereas women, who are the buyers and need to move around, have to cope with density, while carrying bags or baskets full of shopping.

With the passage of time and growth of industries, economic, cultural and social advantages bring about changes in the conventional norms of homebound women. Nowadays many women enter higher education, graduate from overseas universities and pursue a career.

The boundary between private and public spheres is dissolving and women and men are taking the liberty of having a preference toward household chores or paid employment. Despite the growing number of women in the paid work force, they continue to perform the roles of nurturer and housekeeper.

The double function in reproductive and productive work renders women as users of a wider spectrum of the habitat and they are more affected by physical impediments than men (Parker 1999).

For women, the high pavement along the thoroughfares and the staircases without handrails at the entrance of modern buildings may impede their physical mobility.

We might see a woman holding the hand of a toddler and carrying the shopping with her other arm while crossing a congested road and stepping up and down along the pavement. Men, such as hawkers, face the same privation.

In conventional trade, a hawker carries vegetables, fruit, knick-knacks, food or beverage in bamboo containers and tins on shoulder poles. Another common scene is a man who pushes and pulls his cart of goods along the streets. Women and men have to deal with high, narrow, uneven and cracked pavement.

Eventually, they are forced to walk on the road as jaywalkers, without taking precautions to potential dangers from traffic accidents.

Public transportation and street lighting are services offered by the city, but they do not give priority to the convenience and safety of women and men. Public buses and minibuses are too often overflowing with passengers who put their life at risk in order to reach their destination. In the evening, women, who for various reasons are on the road, run the risk of becoming a victim of crime due to poorly designed street lighting.

Prior to the economic turmoil that hit Indonesia in 1997, the country was intensely engaged in the construction of buildings and infrastructure in large cities.

To build high-rise buildings, flyovers, asphalted thoroughfares, footbridges, pavement improvements and vast parking lots was the target of city planning and development officials, who aimed to help the quality of life for women and men.

With the dramatic transformation of a city's physical appearance by modern buildings and infrastructures, and the blending of the private and public spheres, the question is does the extent to which the physical success of the city produce a habitat support and enrich the lives of its citizens.

The answer is perhaps yes for the financially secure. The poor, the elderly, the disabled and small children remain limited from accessing and using the physical facilities of the improved habitat.

The city of today cannot claim to be nondiscriminatory. The process of gendered habitat is attained and strengthened by the growing trend towards decentralization, where each local region governs or controls itself rather than being controlled by the central government.

It gives hope for creating cities that are up to the standard women and men require for safety and comfort, thereby easing their hectic life. Decentralization paves the way for city planners and managers to rely less on top-down government policies and to pay more heed to underprivileged inhabitants.

They are poorly represented in the formulation of policies, and they are excluded from the city's agenda on physical development. They need to be included from the beginning of the development process. By stressing the significance of gender- sensitive planning, a habitat attuned to people's needs is likely to be created, leading ultimately to the accomplishment of "Cities for All".

The writer is a researcher at the Research Institute for Human Settlements (Puslitbang Permukiman), Ministry of Public Works, Bandung regency.