Inés Sánchez de Madariaga

Gender and Planning: from research to implementation

Lecture by Inés Sánchez de Madariaga, Professor of Urban Planning and Director of the UNESCO Chair on Gender, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid.

This lecture will be presented virtually, please register in advance for the Zoom webinar link.

Gender dimensions are slowly starting to be integrated into planning practices across Europe. After over four decades of research and advocacy following the foundational studies by Dolores Hayden (1977, 1981) among others, governments at all levels in various European countries have been adopting legislation, regulations, funding mechanisms, and operational tools. Such governmental initiatives set a framework within which actual implementation is starting to show some specific results. The international agendas on sustainable development and the UN New Urban Agenda also refer specifically to the gender dimensions of urban planning. Early experiences in Europe include those of the British feminist groups of architects Matrix and the Women Design Service, the Italian policies on time use in cities, the gender impact assessments (GIA) used in the Netherlands in the 1990s, among others carried out in different countries. While Vienna has been the city with a more consolidated experience of close to 30 years, other countries such as Spain are rapidly developing ample and pioneering experiences that demonstrate new possibilities for considering gender dimensions at the local, municipal, and regional levels, and within a significant range of planning domains, from housing to public space, from facilities to transportation, often carried out under the auspices of regional governments. This lecture will illustrate the state of the art on gender mainstreaming in urban planning in Europe with a particular focus in Spain. After a brief introduction to relevant concepts, it will show recent innovative experiences of gender mainstreaming in urban planning and design at the regional, urban and neighborhood levels.

Inés Sánchez de Madariaga, Professor of Urban Planning and UNESCO Chair on Gender in Science, Technology and Innovation, is a leading international expert on gender in transportation, urban planning, architecture, and STEM, with extensive experience in policy, practice, and research. She has led numerous successful international collaborations, as Chair of the Advisory Group on Gender Issues to the Executive Director of UN-Habitat (AGGI), Chair of the international COST network Gender, Science, Technology and Environment, and co-Director of the EU-US Gendered Innovations Project. She has played a key role in introducing gender dimensions in Spanish and European urban planning, working with national, regional, and local governments, as well as with private developers, to implement legislation, programs, plans, and projects, that integrate gender issues into planning and transportation. She has held public office as Deputy Director General or Architecture, Advisor to the Minister of Housing, Advisor to the Minister of Science, Director of the Women and Science Unit at the Cabinet of the Secretary of State for Research. A former Fulbright grantee, she has been Visiting Scholar at UCLA, the Bauhaus- Weimar, London School of Economics, and Columbia University. She is author of over 100 articles and of two reference books on gender in planning and transportation. In 2008 she coined the term “mobility of care” which is being used by policy makers and researchers across the world. In 2021 she received the Matilde Ucelay Prize in recognition for her professional trajectory in promoting women and gender equality in transportation, mobility and urban planning, awarded by the Spanish Ministry of Transportation and Urban Affairs.

Organized by the PhD students in the Urban Planning Program at Columbia GSAPP. Free and open to the public.

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