Page 77 - Procurement guidelines for smart sustainable cities - A U4SSC deliverable

The problem

Despite a revolution in how we work and an increasingly diverse society, most cities are still
designed by, and for, men.

For women, especially those who do not work in a 9-to-5 job, the urban environment can be
frustrating, inconvenient or downright dangerous.

For example, a recent survey in Indonesia reported that 60 per cent of women had experienced
sexual harassment while travelling to and from work, a grim statistic echoed across the world.

As a result, many women and girls do not enjoy the basic right to freedom of movement and miss
out on opportunities to work, study or simply enjoy themselves.

In 2019, UN Women Indonesia and Pulse Lab Jakarta launched a project to explore the problem
in three cities across Indonesia.

“Many women, girls, and sexual and gender minorities around the world feel inconvenienced, ill-
at-ease, and unsafe in the urban environment.”

World Bank Handbook on Gender-inclusive Planning

The approach

Research began by examining the existing literature on safety and mobility for women. It soon
became clear that most studies had focussed on middle-class office workers.

Very little attention had been paid to women working at night such as shopkeepers, call centre
workers or cleaners, who make up a significant part of Indonesia’s retail economy.

Equally, the recommendations proposed – from installing CCTV to better street lighting –
concentrated on improving infrastructure, rather than on the experiences of women getting to
and from work.

The researchers realized they needed to get to know the female “users” of public transport in
depth. To do this, 37 women from three cities across Indonesia were invited to take part in user
research, including:

• diary studies – in which women recorded their travel experiences over four days;

• face-to-face interviews – allowing the researchers to probe further into the thought process,
emotions and underlying beliefs behind the diary entries;
• field studies – where researchers accompanied women on their journeys to and from work.

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