Working Women
Advancing towards gender equal citites
C.Z. Ikink (TU Delft - Architecture and the Built Environment)
Birgit Hausleitner – Mentor (TU Delft - Urban Design)
M. van Dorst – Mentor (TU Delft - Urban Studies)
Simona Bianchi – Graduation committee member (TU Delft - Architectural Technology)
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Abstract
This thesis explores the effects of patriarchy in the built environment and investigates solutions to gender inequality in the city. Although gender inequality has been fought against throughout the last century, women and men still do not enjoy equal social positions. One of the biggest manifestations is that of a difference in gender roles, wherein women are still expected to fulfil most - if not all - of the unpaid care labour in the family. The city fails to support activities connected to care labour, both in causing longer travelling times as well as failing to provide the building of community. Theoretical research on the topic of gender mainstreaming, supported by fieldwork in Vienna, a city that has been implementing these principles since the 1990’s, has provided an extensive overview of implementations that support gender equality in the city, which are combined in a pattern language.
The pattern language has been applied in a design for the exemplary location of Katendrecht, where they have been developed into a design for a gender equal neighbourhood. This project shows that design that offers diverse environments, facilitates community, increases the accessibility of public space and amenities, and prioritises slow and shared mobility results in a gender-equal city.