Cities Alliance Annual Report 2018

Stepping
Up Gender
Mainstreaming
at Cities
Alliance
In 2018 the Cities Alliance advanced
Gender Mainstreaming across
its procedures and operations.
We consolidated and refined our
two-pronged approach to gender
mainstreaming, with a rigorous
assessment of the different implications
each Cities Alliance intervention
has for both women and men. This
approach has enabled the Secretariat
to significantly increase gender
mainstreaming in its projects with
grantees and development partners.
Concluding the Gender Equality
JWP
Through a concerted effort by Cities
Alliance members, the management
team and all staff, the Secretariat’s
Gender Mainstreaming Team was
able to conclude the Joint Work
Programme Achieving Gender Equality
in City Development in April 2018.
After evaluating and considering
members’ responses and coordination
needs for global advocacy activities
on the theme of Gender Equality
in Cities, the Secretariat decided
to complement its advocacy efforts
with activities to ensure that all our
operations at the national and local
level in partner countries are aligned
with our commitment to Gender
Mainstreaming.
This decision triggered various
achievements in 2018:
Highlighting gender at the 2018
European Development Days
(EDD)
The 2018 EDD in Brussels invited the
global development community to
reflect on the role of “Women and
Girls at the Forefront of Sustainable
Development: protect, empower,
invest.” The Secretariat was invited
to organise several high-level events,
including a side event on “Public and
safe spaces for women: a south-south
contribution” jointly with Fundación
Avina, Safetipin and UN-Habitat. This
session focused on the contributions
that women have made in generating
inclusive public spaces by revisiting
successful experiences of cities from
Africa, Latin America, and the Middle
East and North Africa.
Disseminating knowledge on
gender and access to public
goods and services
A communication campaign
disseminated the recommendations
deriving from the Cities Alliance’s
2017 review of gendered barriers
to access public goods and services
in cities. This review provides city
officials with case studies, examples
and recommendations for how local
interventions to support genderresponsive
delivery of key public
services can contribute to the
economic empowerment and social
inclusion of often marginalised and
vulnerable groups and individuals.
The study 4 offers a framework for
assessing the gender responsiveness
of public services in cities. It also
identifies various enabling factors that
are essential to establishing these
public services, including gender
analysis, political leadership and
the existence of broad-based local
coalitions and partnerships.
Because secondary cities are a key
target audience for these efforts, the
Cities Alliance included the results of
this review in a toolkit training session
at the 1 st World Forum of Intermediary
Cities organised in Chefchaouen,
Morocco in July 2018.
4
Gender Responsive Public Services: Pathways to Equitable Economic Growth in Cities is accessible here:
https://www.citiesalliance.org/sites/default/files/Cities_Gender_Layout_FinalWeb.pdf
Annual Report | 2018 53