Gender & Cities 

What do regional and frontline feminists have in common with digital visionaries who are also focused on democracy, inclusion, and transformation?

 

Women at the Table convenes experts, and expert feminists each separately focused on

technology, gender, democracy, urban planning, climate change and community activism

for discussions on shared visions, collaborations and concrete action.

                                                   

JAGORI works with a diverse group of women living on the margins of society, in both the urban and rural areas of the country. Focusing on women’s safety and their inclusion in governance, leadership development and strengthening their collectives and institutions, JAGORI uses creative communications and educational strategies. Suneeta has over three decades of experience on women’s rights, combining action research and gender mainstreaming processes with community-led initiatives and policy advocacy efforts. Programmatic areas of work include gender and urbanization, education and ending violence against women.

Active in the women’s movement, she is one of the Founding Directors of the South Asia Women’s Fund, a core group member of the South Asian Network of Gender Activists and Trainers (SANGAT), a member of the Institutional Ethics Review Board (IERB) at JNU

Associate Professor of Experimental Digital Media at the University of Waterloo she directs the City as Platform Lab. Coleman's work focuses on smart technology, big data, and civic engagement. Her practice engages research methods and artistic inquiry towards the creation of public, civic, and poetic works. Her research affiliations include executive committee member of the Waterloo Games Institute, Berkman Center for Internet & Society, Harvard University, and expert consultant for the European Commission Digital Futures. She is a founding member of the Microsoft Research Fellow Social Media Collective.

Fundación Ciudadano Inteligente (Smart Citizen Foundation) creates web technologies as a key tool for gathering, organizing, illustrating and sharing information through the web, working to promote informed citizen actions and government accountability. Avila is a Guatemalan human rights lawyer and digital rights advocate specializing in Intellectual Property and Technology, her work addresses the crucial intersection between human rights, information, technological change and the power disparities between the Global North and South. As a lawyer in Guatemala, Avila has represented indigenous victims of genocide and other human rights abuses, including the prominent indigenous leader and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Rigoberta Menchu Tum. As part of her longstanding advocacy work in the field of Internet and Human Rights, she led with World Wide Web inventor Sir Tim Berners – Lee a global campaign to uphold human rights in the digital age in more than seventy five countries. Avila sits on the Board of Creative Commons, is a trustee of the Courage Foundation, - an organisation set up to assist whistleblowers at risk - and is an advisory board member of Diem25, exploring the potential of decentralised technologies in Europe. She is currently writing a book about Digital Colonialism and advises the Web Foundation on their new Digital Equality strategies.

Feminist activist and researcher, Nandita has over 30 years of experience in strengthening the women’s movements locally, nationally and internationally both through her activism and writing. Her expertise in building different public private partnerships have led to institutionalized initiatives with the police and local municipalities, Transport authorities for creating safer cities for women. She has been able to mobilize sustained support from corporate, media and celebrities on a pro bono basis to enhance the reach of the feminist agendas. Her co-authored book on women’s movement- Issues at Stake published by Kali for women is an important contribution to the Women’s movement and Women’s studies.

Over the past ten years, she has been an active member in the International council of the World Social Forum (WSF), an important platform for alternative voices globally and has been part of organising the transnational feminist dialogues along with WSFs.

She has been on the Civil Society Advisory Group of UNWomen since 2013 and is an active organizer for One Billion Rising campaign in Mumbai.

In November 2015, she was invited by UNWomen to present a paper on “Making CSW60 work for women’s rights” in a global civil society dialogue consultation with the head of UNWomen, chair of the Bureau of CSW, and the official organising government team and US Ambassador.

A community mobilizer working to organize women living in the informal settlements of Nairobi, Jane has been widely recognized for her efforts, winning a Community Peace builder Award, Outstanding

Leadership Award, and nomination for the International Women of Courage Award in 2011. She has participated and spoken in local and international conferences focusing on development policies on women’s and girls’ rights and safety in relation to reproductive rights and housing, and those that matters to the lives of grassroots women.

She sits on the UN Women National Civil Society Advisory Group, has been a member of the National Peace Steering Committee and been part of the United Nation’s Commission on the Status of Women as a powerful voice pushing for unity leading to quality engagement with grassroots women. Jane has successfully mobilized women living in 8 informal settlements under the title Wamama TunaUwezo. She is a powerful facilitator and currently a consultant of the African Youth Trust under Action Aid Program – Safe City aimed to create violence-free societies for women and girls.

In the Habitat III process, she led a widely-acclaimed Urban Thinkers Campus on women and safety, and served as an expert in Policy Unit 5: Municipal Finance and Local Fiscal Systems. In September2018, Jane together with Huairou grassroots women leaders, successfully organized an Urban Lab in conjunction with the Urban Thinkers Campus that focus on the principle of The City We Need is Safe.

A political scientist by training, since 2000 Kaka has run ELAS Social Investment Fund investing exclusively in women’s leadership and rights of women throughout Brasil, creating social impact and change.

ELAS transforms innovative ideas of thousands of women from different ethnicities, races and sexual orientation into reality launching “call of proposals” to select and support innovative projects of women’s groups working for women’s empowerment and rights.

ELAS has built a pioneering methodology based on meritocracy where women’s groups and organizations use pseudonyms when submitting their proposals aiming to break a culture of favoritism and to ensure transparency.

Chirley Pankará is the first-ever indigenous representative elected for the São Paulo Legislative Assembly, the legislative body of Brazil's largest state. She is one of the nine activists who were elected together through the innovative collective candidacy for State Deputy launched in 2018 by Bancada Ativista (Activist Caucus), an independent movement focused on electing activists for office. Representative of the Pankará ethnic group, she is a pedagogue with a Master in Education, and an expert in indigenous school education. She leads the Center for Indigenous Education and Culture - Ceci Jaraguá, and deeply committed to the defense of causes of indigenous peoples.

Trained in political science, development economics and public administration, Sri’s experience covers a wide spectrum of fields, ranging from good governance, regional-global coordination of women’s networks and cities, and to managing and programming human settlements and gender equality projects funded by the United Nations agencies, as well as with the government. She was the first Chief Executive Officer of a state-funded women machinery, Penang Women’s Development Corporation (PWDC), from 2012-13. At PWDC she directed the first state level gender responsive budgeting initiative with the two local governments, as well as led the development of a Childcare Policy. After the post conflict and tsunami in Acheh, Indonesia, Sri did not hesitate to commit to 3 years to live in Aceh, as Programme Manager of the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM, now known as UN Women), where she successfully implemented and managed a project “Strengthening Women’s Legal Rights.“ She gained regional coordination exposure and expertise working with the United Nations Development Programme’s (UNDP) regional project on urban management and urban governance from 1993 and was the Regional Programme Manager of UNDP’s popular The Urban Governance Initiative (TUGI), when she left in 2004. At UNDP-TUGI, she led the design and facilitation of key programmes and tools with several cities leading to creation of space for inclusion and participation of urban poor women and their communities in local governance such as the Local to Local Dialogues & Platforms, and Governance Report Cards. Sri was appointed as one of the 15-member UN-Habitat Advisory Group on Gender Issues (AGGI) in Aug 2012.

Gender transformation, asset accumulation & just cities. Caroline’s current research focuses on urban gender transformation, a radical paradigm shift from gender mainstreaming.

This conceptual and operational framework identifies urban pathways not only to empower individual women but also to collectively transform gender power relations. The evidence base on transformative interventions includes land tenure and housing, safety in public spaces and informal economic activities.

Moser (2017) ‘Gender transformation in a new global urban agenda: challenges for Habitat III and beyond’, Environment and Urbanization, Vol. 28, No 1, April