What is the room for gender-sensitive policies in African urban development?

Abstract: For a long time, urban sociology discussed the process of “development” with little or no concern to gender. However, the experience and the practice of women and men within and towards the urban realm are not interchangeable. Gender matters for both with consequences to the constitution of the “cityness” and to development itself. The important scholarship of Gender and Development awakened this debate, with consequences to policy-making, while reaching international organizations - which, to a large extent, inform policy design, and introducing the strategy of “gender mainstreaming” in their discourse. Still, an incapacity of these stakeholders to communicate with the urban level associated with an astonishing blindness of local authorities themselves to recognize the primordial and strategic role of gender policies lead to deficient urban development plans. In Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, a city whose development is largely dependent on the action of women informal workers, gender awareness is imperative. Before an existing demand and a vacuum of governance of this issue, Fondation Orange’s corporate philanthropy program “Maisons Digitales” might bridge some gaps.

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