Gender, difference and urban change: implications for the promotion of well-being?

Abstract

This article examines the impacts of urban change on the well-being of women and men, and girls and boys living in cities, and explores how gender intersects with other social relations to differentiate these impacts. It then considers the implications of intersectionality for organizations aiming to promote the interests of specific social groups (such as women or people with disabilities) vis à vis urban change by looking at the experience of Leonard Cheshire’s Asha project, which works with girls and boys with disabilities in Mumbai. It concludes that organizations working to promote the interests of identity-based constituents should both base their strategies around research that recognizes the instersectional nature of social identities and also develop agendas for change that build platforms for social justice that unite, rather than fragment, identity-based claims.