Poor Women in Cities: Challenges and Innovations
Woman in Dharavi, Mumbai, India. Picture published by Thomas Galvez on Flickr under a CC BY 2.0 license.
The urban environment presents unique challenges as well as opportunities for its residents. Cities often have diverse populations with varying income levels and backgrounds, yet these individuals must coexist in a finite space, often with differential access to everything from cultural goods to public transportation and basic sustenance. We want to explore this experience from the perspective of poor women living in the city.
What specific challenges do women face in their day-to-day lives? Which of these challenges are regionally unique? Which ones do you believe are universal, cutting across geographic boundaries and affecting poor urban women everywhere similarly? To what extent are these difficulties similar to, or different from those faced by city-dwelling men living in poverty?
Do cities also present unique opportunities to poor women? What education, career and family opportunities are available specifically in urban environments? How do these differ from the norms enjoyed by middle and upper class urban women? Are steps being taken to equalize the playing field across income levels (for example, private or government-sponsored social initiatives targeting women)?
Future Challenges authors are in 65 countries in the developed and the developing world. Take your pick from the Local Views below, and explore the ways in which writers from around the world think about this critical issue.
Tags: Cities, gender, poverty, urban development, urban poor, urbanization, women
Anneliese Guess
Most recent Local Views on ‘Poor Women in Cities’
-
Tackling Nigeria’s Beast of Child Marriages
Written by Chioma Agwuegbo
on July 14, 2016. In March, social media woke up to a really startling story: a young girl, a 13-year-old child that had been kidnapped from Bayelsa, taken to Kano state, rechristened Aisha in an apparent conversion to Islam, and married off to a young man. The girl? Ese Oruru. The man? Yunusa Dahiru, […]
-
Necessary Responsibility: Understanding Uterine Prolapse in Nepal
Written by Slok
on April 1, 2014. Reports exposing the lack of human rights in Nepal are furiously common. The ubiquitous nature of deprivation of human dignity makes immune the anger, the indignation. Reports are made, read, talked about for a week and discarded. None but a select few keep the conversation alive; and those who pin […]
-
Pakistani Poor Women in Cities: Challenges and Innovations
Written by Muhammad Bilal Khalid
on December 31, 2013. Ever wondered what it was like to live on only one dollar a day? Most of us who can read this post will not be able to imagine a lifestyle based on thirty dollars or less a month. Now imagine supporting a family of four or five on such a […]
-
The commercialisation of Fiji’s national drink and its impact on rural women
Written by Arnold Chanel
on December 29, 2013. Rapid modernisation has caused Fiji to adopt new cultural trends that are at odds with traditional customs. Kava is a drink that is usually served at formal ceremonies such as meetings of village elders and chiefs but as a result of modernist influences, it has become a commercialized commodity rather […]
-
Commercial sex work in the guise of entertainment
Written by Anuja Upadhyay
on December 18, 2013. Signboards with names like Jhakkas tequila with Dance or Moonlight Cabin Restaurant or Welcome Massage dot the crowded streets of Thamel, Purano Baneshwor, Gaushala and other localities in Kathmandu. A little more than a decade ago commercial sex work and prostitution began to thrive behind the thin veil of cabin restaurants, dance bars and massage parlours in Kathmandu catering […]
-
Parenthood makes you poor: realities of British and Polish single mothers
Written by Dominika Kaczkowska
on December 17, 2013. ‘Tearing down the walls of silence, shame & stigma can empower women as pillars of the community’ – Zainab Bangura, Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary General on Sexual Violence in Conflict on the Annual Summit of Women in Parliament Global Forum. As a Polish national who lived in […]
-
Las luchas de las mujeres migrantes en el Perú
Written by Juan Arellano
on December 12, 2013. Abstract: A woman who migrates certainly is a woman who searches. Through this article we will share a couple of stories that show how Peruvian women of the Andes and the jungle that were forced to migrate from the countryside or small towns to the capital, faced new problems and […]
-
The State of Poor Urban Women of Pakistan
Written by Aown Kaz
on December 9, 2013. Poverty in Pakistan can be noted as endemic — spreading across the country at an alarming rate. In a population of 180 million, Pakistani people living below the poverty line account for 21% of the entire population according to the World Development Indicators (WDI) 2013 report by the World Bank. In circumstances […]
-
Deconstructing Machismo, Building New Awareness
Written by Paula Fortes
on December 4, 2013. Back in the late 70s in Brazil, there was little women could do about open prejudice. Not even the law did much for them. There were absurd moves like the one to annul mariages if the man discovered his bride was not a virgin. Recently, newspaper columnist Miriam Leitão wrote about the difficulties […]
-
Poor women in cities: The journey called migration
Written by Chioma Agwuegbo
on December 2, 2013. The first thing she notices are the streetlights; they don’t have those in the village. The roads are nicer too; some still have potholes but they definitely can’t be compared to where she’s come from. Ada* is in the city, where her dreams of going to a good school and […]
