Exploratory walks, non-sexist recreation courses, promotion of heritage… On the occasion of a study day on gender and public space organized on Friday May 7 by the City of Paris – the third on this subject since 2014 – , the deputy in charge of gender equality, Hélène Bidard, presented a reference guide on gender and public space, in order to highlight existing good practices.
How to make cities more equal? Act so that the comings and goings of women are no longer hampered in the public space, still often thought of by and for men? From Geneva to Bordeaux, via Brest or Vienne, the guide, which gives pride of place to Parisian initiatives, presents a myriad of concrete achievements, a sign of a relatively recent awareness of these issues. However, there is an urgent need, as the figures from several surveys gathered in the publication recall: nearly one in three women feels a sense of insecurity in her neighborhood and 10% of them have been victims of physical violence. or sexual in public space, 100% of public transport users have been victims of gender harassment or sexual assault at least once in their life, 37% of Ile-de-France residents say they have suffered at least one act of violence in the public space, and 25% at the national level …
In this fight for an egalitarian public space, Vienna is seen as a model: in 2006, the Austrian capital set up a “gender budget”, which integrates the criterion of gender in the development of public policies. In terms of town planning, this is reflected, for example, in the signage used in public transport, with a woman or a man with a child to represent priority places, or in the development of public street lighting, but also parks and sidewalks. On the same model, in Nantes, a reflection was carried out, which resulted in the creation of luminous pedestrian paths in certain areas. In another register, still in Nantes, but also in Brest, a system “Stop on demand” was introduced in night buses, allowing women to get off as close as possible to their place of destination.
“Feminist transition” underway
In Paris, the gender dimension was incorporated for the first time in the development project of seven large Parisian squares launched in 2016, with the obligation for project managers, included in the specifications, to take account “The question of the place of women in the public space”. “We started to take an interest in all this in 2014, when the issue of street harassment was highlighted by feminist collectives”, explains Hélène Bidard. In conjunction with researchers, work was carried out to identify the obstacles to the conquest of public space by women. Ten exploratory walks took place, for example, between 2014 and 2018, in different neighborhoods, in order to identify spatial inequalities and imagine ways to remedy them.
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