Safe Cities for Women

On International Women’s Day, leaders of Latin American women’s movements spoke to Comunidad Segura, discussing strategies to overcome threats to women's security, an insecurity that confines women in their homes, where they are also often met with more violence. In Recife, Bogotá, Rosario and Santiago, women from four Latin American cities share strategies to face the challenge of making cities safe for women.
 

Show me a woman who does not balk at crossing a dark empty park at night for fear of being attacked. According to the leaders of the Safe Cities Free of Violence Against Women, a program implemented in Santiago, Chile, Bogotá, Colombia, Rosario, Argentina and Recife, Brazil, over the past three years, (and more recently in cities in El Salvador and Guatemala) – many women will not go out at night for fear of urban violence.

How many of these women understand however, that this sense vulnerability, a situation common to many modern cities, is a violation of their fundamental rights and a form of gender based violence that limits their personal and professional potential?

To help women understand that what is considered normal is unacceptable is one of the most important results of the Safer Cities program, a program developed by UNIFEM in partnership with Red Mujer y Hábitat in Latin America, bringing together a great number of women’s organizations in the continent. Their goal: to be able to influence local agendas to design urban policy that addresses gender equality, one that boosts the empowerment of women.

“It is the first time that I realize that I have the right to get home safely”, said one of the young students reached by the program in Suba, northwestern Bogotá, according to Lucy Cardona, from the Asociación de Vivienda Popular, one of the organizations that develops the program in Colombia. Cardona tells us that the young woman came to that realization when taking part in an exercise to map places that were unsafe in her neighborhood. 

The motivation behind the effort to reduce the levels of violence that affect urban women came from looking at how they live. “We noted that women are not going out, that they are are stopping their children from spending time outside, in the streets, that they live a sort of enclosed existence that limits them. Add to that domestic violence which makes them even more fearful, we felt need to make women take back their cities,” said Olga Segovia, from UNIFEM’s Brazilian branch.

When asked to point out threats to their safety, women listed empty street corners, dark parks, insufficient nighttime bus services, men on drugs or alcohol. Liliana Rainero, a member of the Red in Argentina explains that the city’s organization, the distance to services and the availability of public transportation affect women and men differently. “Whether you feel safe or not is an attribute of physical space and for women it is one of the most important obstacles they find today in cities, where a generalized feeling of fear adds to the fear of sexual aggression.”

Fear, however, does not go away once you close the doors of your house. To cite a few examples: in Brazil's northeastern city of Recife, 300 women are killed a year by their partners; in the Colombian capital, Bogotá, every 53 minutes a woman is reported being battered or harmed by her partner.  The program's goal is to foster cities where a woman is free from violence both in public areas and in the privacy of their homes. But how to bring about change? 
 
Recife

Joana Santos, from the SOS Corpo, describes a gradually changing situation in Recife, where they have been active. The women’s organizations there has a solid 20 year history, and has been able to inject new energy into the Safe Cities program over the  past 3 years, making the issue of violence against women more visible and generating  public indignation at problems that used to be glossed over by public opinion.
 
On the one hand, there are those strategies that began symbolically and evolved into effective measures. One such example is the whistle blowers of Recife, who literally blow whistles when they hear that a woman is being assaulted. “The whistle stops the violence from escalating and offers women solidarity by calling public attention to an act of violence,” explains Santos.

Recife's women have made an effort to ensure that the women's groups have a political education, so that it helps them dialogue with oficial entities and thus effectively influence the design of urban policy.
 
“In order to lower violence against women we urgently need to have more police precincts, there are only 4, and to improve center located in rural areas that offer support for women affected by violence. We also need to educate and train people, so that they can use the tools that are at their disposal, such as the Maria da Penha law, that is not fully enforced. 

Rosario 

As to Rosario, if significant progress has been made in gender equity in the city political it was due to political will uninterrupted through succeeding administrations. On the one hand, as Rainero explains, there has been an alliance with the Urban Municipal Guard – an unarmed police force – that has been trained to offer support and to prevent violence against women. One example is increased policing of public transportation, where women are often targeted.

“Once they became aware of the daily violence directed at them, and that they could change this, women decided to take over an abandoned and derelict city square. They painted a mural proclaiming their right to a city with 'more women in the streets, safe and free of violence'. This event generated support from the municipal authorities, who in turn provided the appropriate furnishing and lighting. That is why this simple neighborhood square has such great symbolic value,” said Rainero.

Bogotá

To give women a voice and vote in local issues is the main goal of the Safe Cities program in Suba, Bogotá. The program trained women from the community to empower them by letting them know of their rights and capabilities take an active role in the public life of the neighborhood.

For Marisol Dalmazzo, from the Asociación de Vivienda Popular, the most difficult part  was to play by men’s rules. “When it came down to matters of the urban landscape, women were barred from participation in the process, the rules did not allow women access to decision making. If they are not in the company of an organization it would be very complicated for them to make themselves heard. But we have since had very good results, we changed the regulations and now there is a focus group of 35 women with whom we began to work and it is more active. The idea is not only influence local urban planning, but also to revise the city plan itself.”

 
Santiago

To take back the night, perhaps the biggest threat to women, and to take back the neighborhood, are the twin tenets of the safer cities program in Santiago, Chile. As explained by Marisol Saborido, from SUR, UNIFEM coordinator for Chile. Santiago's women have mobilized to recover spaces that are traditionally dangerous or empty, such as parks and squares that are empty at night.
 

But the foundations for all this, explains Saborido, is a very solid work with the self-esteem of each woman. “To conquer public space is related to one's relation with one's own body. If it is raped and violated then it becomes the source of great fear that projects into our experience of the neighborhood.  Our work starts at the personal level, at the level of our own bodies, and progresses towards empowerment. When women find they can rely on each other, then they believe they can also do things as a group, and that is why women's movements are so strong in the neighborhood communities.”

Apart from this field work, the Chilean program is preparing a report on violence that compares three cities, Bogotá, Santiago and Rosario.

Read Further:

Unifem

Red Mujer y Hábitat