RECLAIMING THE URBAN: AN INTERSECTIONAL ANALYSIS OF WOMEN’S AND MEN’S EXPERIENCES OF PUBLIC SPACES IN KOLKATA, INDIA

Abstract

This research examines the interconnectedness of urban infrastructure, the built environment and gendered socio-cultural norms in women’s vulnerability to male violence and differentiated accessibility in public spaces of Kolkata. By bringing together Black feminist intersectionality theoretical framework and post-colonial Indian feminist urban scholarship, it seeks to understand how gender intersects with other forms of identity and power to determine accessibility to urban public spaces, safety within those spaces, and what factors shape women’s accessibility to public spaces. Furthermore, by examining if and how men’s use and perceptions of space differ from that of women’s in Kolkata, this research provides a nuanced understanding of how structural power relations are embedded in urban space. Finally, by examining the experiences of a broader range of voices of marginalized groups from the global South to global North centric urban scholarship, this research seeks to understand how access to urban space affects people’s accessibility and their resulting decision-making related to education, jobs or socializing. In doing so, the objective is to shed light how the interconnection of urban infrastructure, the built environment and gendered socio-cultural norms have hampered women’s accessibility in public spaces and use of city resources, and therefore their right to the city in order that the “urban” can be reclaimed for and by women and marginalized groups, both in terms of access to public spaces and in urban knowledge production. This dissertation demonstrates that differentiated accessibility of women and other marginalized groups and violence against women in public spaces is caused by multiple factors of flawed urban infrastructure and built environment, experiences of harassment, patriarchal socio-cultural norms and values. In doing so, it argues that accessibility and safety issues can never be generalized based on a particular category like gender, but need to be considered in terms of intersecting multiple social identities and the specific power relations embedded in a place. The research exposes how particular power hierarchies are maintained in city spaces by reiterating women’s vulnerability to violence through gendered socio-cultural norms, deficient built environment and urban infrastructure. Simultaneously, power hierarchies are also maintained by creating and perpetuating images of the marginalized men as the dangerous Others; thereby producing an overall climate of fear and limiting accessibility of marginalized groups, mostly women. Therefore, this dissertation is significant in several scholarly ways, by a) bringing together several scholarly conversations including feminist urban geography, planning and global South feminist urban theorizing while examining different factors that impact women’s accessibility and safety to public spaces; b) adding a global South perspective of marginalized experiences of women and men to urban geography scholarship with a postcolonial lens which mostly focused on Anglo-American experiences; c) incorporating perspectives and experiences of men to feminist geography scholarship therefore proving a greater understanding of power relations over space and the need to go beyond gender to analyze causes of differentiated accessibility and safety; d)integrating Black feminists’ Intersectionality as a theoretical framework in feminist geography modes of inquiry and to Indian feminist urban scholarship thereby explaining the contextuality of urban experiences which cannot be generalized as per any group; and e) reconceptualizing our understanding of violence against women, accessibility in urban public spaces and safe cities by examining women’s experiences in public spaces and the negotiations they make while accessing a perceived safe city such as Kolkata.