The Gender Equality Act in Victoria creates an obligation to understand how gender affects needs and experiences, and to design, assess and manage public spaces so women feel safe in those places.
Bright light does not necessarily make a space feel safer, as seen here where there’s a sharp drop-off into dark shadows at the edge of the path.
grafxart/Shutterstock
Bright lighting alone does not make a space feel safe. It can blind and disorientate and create dark shadows at the edges. Tellingly, ‘unsafe’ places had much higher illuminance than ‘safe’ places.
If vintage city design used to trap women in suburbia, what’s the modern city looking like?
from shutterstock.com
In the 1970s, a young urban planning professor, Dolores Hayden, believed that city design was the key to unlocking patriarchal structures that trapped women in the home. How much has the city changed?
Homeless women are particularly vulnerable to gendered violence.
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Survival sex can be a viable option for women managing homelessness. It ranged from staying with men for a night or a woman remaining in a sexual relationship to avoid becoming homeless again.
The man who plowed a van into a crowd in Toronto was a member of the so-called ‘incel’ community.
CrowdSpark/Julla Shanghavi/AAP
Men who subscribe to ideological masculinity believe that women’s empowerment has left them victimised and discriminated against. And they play out their resentment through violent acts.
Eurydice Dixon was murdered in a busy Melbourne park - how can we make these spaces safer for women?
DAVID CROSLING/AAP Image
Australia has guidelines for designing safe parks, but the stories of many women show these are not enough. We must involve women in co-designing these shared public spaces.
Safe access zones create a bubble of safety from certain conduct around abortion clinics.
PETER RAE/AAP
Laws providing for safe access protect the dignity and safety of staff who need access to their workplace and women who need access to health-care services without harassment and intimidation.
Torre Glòries in Barcelona is an obvious example of statement architecture, but much of the gender bias built into cities is more insidious and pervasive.
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Women encounter many difficulties in cities that are products of male design and planning. We need to move past the practice of one group shaping our world on behalf of everyone else.
Due to a fear of being harassed or assaulted, many women go out of their way to avoid travelling through parts of the city where sexual entertainment venues are concentrated.
Blemished Paradise/flickr
Despite the rise of feminism, strip clubs and other ‘sexual entertainment’ businesses have proliferated in our cities. And women are feeling the harmful impacts of the industry’s presence.
Men and women have starkly different experiences of public transport as they travel around the city.
Raul Lieberwirth/flickr
Most women feel unsafe when using public transport. Instead of gender segregation, researchers suggest gender-sensitive design could be a better way to ensure safety for all.
How does a city shape women’s feelings of safety?
Pamela Salen, XYX Lab, Monash University 2017