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What s new in the updated report?
1 Terrassa City Council (2019), written by COLL-PLANAS, G.; and SOLÀ-MORALES, R., Toolkit to incorporate intersectionality into local policies , available at: https://igualtatsconnect.cat/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/ Publicacion-Igualtats-Connect-ENG-2.pdf
Gender equality is a constantly evolving challenge. In this report we have highlighted some of the new movements, initiatives and changes in context since 2019. As already mentioned, the Covid-19 pandemic has drastically altered urban life and deepened pre-existing gender-based inequalities, especially for women, rolling back much of the progress achieved to date. In March 2022, the war in Ukraine led to the displacement of many residents as refugees, many of whom are women and children. The continuing social and economic disruptions caused by these and other global developments have significant implications for gender equality, in particular at a local level. There have also been a number of policy developments in Europe. The new European Union (EU) Multi Annual Funding Framework for 2021-2027 is underway with 1.074 trillion EUR funding, which could have a real impact on equality if gender mainstreaming tools are well integrated. Furthermore, the European Commission under Ursula von der Leyen launched the Gender Equality Strategy 2020- 2025, which aims to make significant progress toward ending gender-based violence, challenging gender stereotypes, closing gender gaps in the labour market, addressing the gender pay and pension gaps, closing the gender care gap and achieving gender balance in decision-making and in politics. European cities also play a key role in reaching the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including Goal 5, the empowerment of women and girls. As a programme, URBACT has built on the 2019 Gender Equal Cities initiative by partnering with institutions such as the Committee of the Regions and the Joint Research Council to promote ideas and encourage debate. All URBACT networks and cities are now required to consider the gender perspectives of their work and are supported to do so with new tools and workshops. Furthermore, gender
equality will be one of three priority topics in the new programme, URBACT IV. And in 2019, URBACT was thrilled to welcome the first network on gender, the GenderedLandscape Action Planning Network, led by Umeå (Sweden), demonstrating that this topic is also a priority for cities and municipalities in Europe. Awareness of the need to foster intersectional approaches, as highlighted in the first report, has improved in the past few years. The term intersectionality was coined by Professor Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989 and describes the theory that various social identities, such as race, gender, sexuality, and class, intersect to create different, multiple, overlapping (dis)advantages, recognition, discriminations, privilege and marginalisations. Intersectionality is not just a theoretical concept. Taking an intersectional approach to gender equality that addresses power relationships helps to actively tackle all forms of discrimination. This means engaging with complexity, consciously seeking out hidden voices, developing a nuanced understanding of solutions and questioning our own privilege and position in the power structures. We recognise that gender has more than two categories and speaking of gender beyond the binary is more accurate and current. To date, the implementation of municipal programmes accounting for this reality remains an additional challenge and case studies or good practice examples are rare. The Terassa City Council (Spain) developed a toolkit that provides some practical advice on how to incorporate intersectionality into local policies1. In this updated report we continue to illustrate the different experiences of women and men in the city, and have added new case studies and calls to action highlighting women and men of colour, with migration backgrounds, on low incomes, identifying as LGBTQI and living with a disability.
