Equality is designed, and so is inequality - opinion

Public spaces are designed “for everyone,” yet half the population experiences them differently, and far less favorably. For women, even the simplest interactions with the city – finding a restroom, walking home, or going for a run – often require waiting, vigilance, and a constant awareness of potential risks.

In recent years, this fundamental imbalance has increasingly occupied my thinking, personally and professionally. As a lecturer, I find myself examining more closely the relationship between gender and space, the invisible barriers embedded in everyday environments, and architecture’s role in producing them.

In Israel, public debate about women’s exclusion from public spaces often focuses on visible forms of inequality, such as formal bans or enforced segregation. Yet the attention given to such overt inequality eclipses the less evident yet more pervasive form of gendered exclusion embedded in the very structure of everyday spatial life.

This form of inequality does not usually appear as a prohibition. Instead, it emerges through planning systems that assume a supposedly universal user. No one is officially excluded, but cities are often built around the needs of an archetypal citizen, while many others are expected to adapt. This spatial order is not accidental.

Cities do not simply evolve on their own. For decades, urban design operated under the assumption that planning is gender-neutral. Yet as a woman, I have learned through theory and, more pointedly, through personal experience that “neutral” space is anything but neutral. To better understand how gendered planning maintains the appearance of neutrality, we must briefly return to the historical foundations of planning.

Urban historian Dolores Hayden and other scholars have shown that modern cities were not planned in a social vacuum. Ideas presented as objective often reflected a specific image of the "typical urban user" – someone economically productive, highly mobile, and largely free from caregiving responsibilities.

As planning principles developed, this perspective became embedded in zoning systems, transport networks, public facilities, and spatial hierarchies that determine where investment and accessibility are prioritized. They did not equally account for everyone’s needs, nor were they intended to.

These dynamics lie at the heart of feminist urbanism, which encourages planners and policymakers to look beyond technical blueprints and consider the lived experience of those who navigate cities every day. Consider the familiar lines outside women’s public restrooms.

Most of us see them as inevitable, a biological reality, or even a joke. Yet this normalized, everyday inconvenience is in fact one expression of a design philosophy that confuses sameness with fairness. Decades of research show that women typically require more time due to clothing design, caregiving responsibilities, pregnancy, or accompanying children.

The queue outside a public restroom is not an accident of nature. It is a product of design.

The gap between design and experience also manifests in other ways. Studies consistently show that many women worry about their safety while running and often choose longer, better-lit routes, avoid isolated parks, and stay close to visible activity.

If public spaces are open to everyone, why does moving through them so often feel conditional?

Another example appears in playground design. Research has shown that many play environments unintentionally prioritize patterns of play more commonly associated with boys, such as large central sports areas, while leaving less room for other forms of activity. As a result, girls often withdraw from these spaces as they grow older.

These examples reveal a broader pattern. Urban environments do not merely reflect social inequalities; they can also reinforce them. Individually, each design decision may seem insignificant. Collectively, they shape everyday behavior and gradually normalize unequal conditions.

Feminist urbanism offers a framework for recognizing these patterns and addressing them directly. Its goal is not to design cities exclusively for women, but to question the assumptions that have long defined what is considered standard planning practice.

When urban environments are planned with the full range of human circumstances in mind – including caregiving, aging, dependency, and social connection – cities become more functional for everyone. People who care for children, accompany elderly relatives, or rely heavily on public transportation benefit from design approaches that recognize these everyday realities.

“Equality” in this context does not mean identical facilities for all. Rather, it means creating spaces that are genuinely usable by diverse populations and allow meaningful participation in public life.

Urban equality requires the active participation of those who experience the city every day and will not emerge solely from professional expertise. Numerous cities have already begun to apply this approach, translating everyday knowledge into practical design insights.

One example is the use of "safety audits," in which residents walk through neighborhoods together with planners and local officials, identifying elements that affect their sense of safety and accessibility, such as poor lighting, obstructed sightlines, or isolated transit stops.

The most widely cited example of gender-sensitive planning is in Vienna. The city widened sidewalks to accommodate strollers, improved street lighting, redesigned parks to encourage equal participation by girls and boys, and implemented planning guidelines that prioritize pedestrian access and everyday mobility.

Meaningful change does not always begin with formal programs. It often begins when ordinary residents notice something in their daily routines and decide to speak up. A resident asks the municipality why a pathway to the bus stop is poorly lit.

A parent raises concerns about a playground where girls gradually disappear as they grow older. A group of neighbors attends a local planning meeting to ask why sidewalks are too narrow for strollers or wheelchairs. Someone calls the municipal hotline to report a dark park entrance or an isolated transit stop that feels unsafe at night.

These may seem like small acts. Yet with each question, everyday experiences are added to the public agenda – potential catalysts for changing planning assumptions. Every sidewalk, transit route, public facility, and neighborhood layout reflects choices made by planners and policymakers. When we begin to speak about how spaces actually feel and function, planners and officials gain the evidence they need to act, and cities begin to change and designs are revised.

As Rachel Goldberg-Polin reminds us, "We are not what we say, we are not what we think, and we are not even what we believe. In this life, we are what we do." Transformative change begins when we stop silently enduring and start demanding change.

For generations, women have learned to adjust, to move differently, to stay alert, to take longer routes, to occupy less room. I often think about how easily we adapt to spaces that were never really designed for us and how those spaces surreptitiously reshape our behavior, our expectations, and even what feels reasonable to ask for.

On this International Women’s Day, the challenge is not only to reflect on inequality but to insist that the environments we inhabit reflect the needs of all who live in them. Equality is not simply declared – it is built into the spaces of everyday life and begins when we decide that it is not only women who must adapt.