Gender data gaps in urban research

Recent years and months have seen an increase in initiatives to identify and address gaps in data collection related to gender. In 2014, the United Nations Foundation, together with funding support from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, launched Data2X a platform dedicated to improving the quality and availability of gender data with the aim to promote the use of this data in policymaking for women and girls. Last month, Caroline Criado Perez published her book, Invisible Women, which is a comprehensive compendium of the gaps in our knowledge in nearly every sphere of life: from safety tests on cars and medical drug testing to measuring women’s transport patterns.

In light of these debates, the NGUR is hosting a workshop on the gender data gap as it relates to urban research and proposes the following questions:

1. What are the current gaps in our data regarding gender and the urban environment?
2. How can we identify potential gaps and address this data collection?
3. How do we overcome the challenges of complexity (or perceived complexity) that disaggregated data and data collection brings?
4. What are the ways we can incorporate gender data for better urban design and policy?
5. What might be a useful research project to address one or more gaps in gender and urban research that we could possibly undertake as a collective?

This will be a facilitated workshop and we would ask researchers’ who know of any gaps in their specific field to share their experiences during the workshop and if you have or are currently undertaking research related to this agenda, please let us know if you may be willing to give a short input during the event.

In addition to the above mentioned agenda, we will also be discussing the NGUR annual colloquium on the theme: Gender and Urban Research: state of the art? Which is scheduled for Friday 30 August. We would like to discuss this idea and the call for papers. We propose that the event could be the basis for a special journal edition. Please diarise the date and get in touch if you have a potential paper to present.

NGUR executive committee
The network for gender and urban research is looking for volunteers to join its executive committee to assist with organising events and running the network. The tasks are not onerous but there is potential to have greater impact for the network.

Margot Rubin – margot.rubin@wits.ac.za
Alexandra Parker – alexandra.parker@gcro.ac.za