Paving the way to gender-inclusive cities
Our MAAT project is a new European initiative aimed at promoting evidence-based urban policy-making and non-formal education for and by youth. The project is focused on promoting cooperation, inclusion, equity, creativity, and innovation in city planning with one of the aims being to pave the way to gender-inclusive cities.
Women experience cities differently from men (mainly due to their traditional roles caring for children, elderly relatives and the sick):
- by using childcare, health infrastructures and schools more than men do;
- by spending more time on public transport to this facilities;
- by making more stops in the commute from work to home;
- by being the primary targets of sexual assaults on public transport and streets since a very young age
and adding to all this the layers of discrimination that are added by belonging to other discriminated groups (suffering also from sexism, racism, homophobia and transphobia, xenophobia, age discrimination, among others).
Within the MAAT project, the partners are in the process of implementing 20 Youth Policy Labs in Rome, Belgrade, Timisoara, and Larnaka, with the aim of engaging in meaningful discussions with youth about urban intersectional gender discrimination and the biases that impact women and girls in their respective cities. Additionally, these labs are working towards developing concrete strategies to address these pressing issues.
Read our preliminary work here: MAAT_Newsletter_1_EN