Gender Issue Guide: Gender Responsive Urban Basic Services

Gender refers to cultural interpretation and prescription of roles, identities and values assigned to women, men, girls, and boys. Gender is highly variable across cultures, socially constructed and subject to changes over time. Gender further defines the unequal conditions between women and men. In most societies to be a woman is to be more disadvantaged: with less power, fewer rights and privileges relative to men.

This issue guide focuses attention on urban basic services in order to illuminate the effects of gender on equality of access and inclusion in the areas of urban energy, urban transport and water and sanitation. This issue guide further seeks to broadly outline the where and how of gender responsive interventions in order to strengthen planned and future actions that can go a long way to reduce poverty and overcome obstacles to gender equality and women’s empowerment.