Issue: Discriminatory laws and policiesIssue: Perceptions of discrimination or harassment (by sex)
Relevance and promising measurement approaches:
Urban poverty and housing unaffordability has severe impacts on women and girls — women and girls who are poor and living in urban slums face challenges distinct to those of men. Yet sex-disaggregated data on housing and shelter is critically lacking.
Data suggest that in 2014, 23% of the urban population lived in slums, but women are disproportionately represented among cities’ poorest residents, with more than half of the female urban population aged 15–49 living in slums in 67% of the countries with available data.
In developing countries, more than half of urban women and girls lack at least one of the following: access to clean water, improved sanitation, durable housing or a sufficient living area. Housing deficits and poor conditions impose extra burdens on women, who already on average spend more time at home on household and unpaid labor. In polluted urban slums, it is most often women who spend the most time in areas heavily polluted by unclean cookstoves and who wash clothing in contaminated water sources. Overcrowding and poor sanitation also make entire households more vulnerable to illness, and it is women who disproportionately shoulder the burden of care for the sick.
Relevance and promising measurement approaches:
For women and girls, cities can open doors to improved services, better work and increased independence. But urban spaces are not always safe for them and can also constrain their ability to move freely and participate in public life. Women face different constraints than men in accessing, using and paying for transport services. Transport can play a significant role in ameliorating or exacerbating the life conditions of women, whose ability to work outside the home may be dependent on safe, violence-free public transport.
Data about women and men’s different travel and transport needs due to their different social and economic roles are crucial to monitoring progress toward SDG 11. The most promising methods currently of data collection on women’s access to, use patterns, and safety on public transportation come from individual cities’ data initiatives. A number of cities have demonstrated benefits from tracking sex-disaggregated information to take action on climate change as well as make services more inclusive.
Relevance and promising measurement approaches:
During crises, whether armed conflicts or a natural disasters, gender inequalities are often exacerbated. A study drawn from 141 countries over 21 years found that more women and girls die during environmental disasters than men and boys, due to unique vulnerabilities caused by poverty, their care-taking roles, or lack of mobility. For those who do survive disaster, pre‑existing patterns of violence and exploitation can worsen, and new threats to women and girls emerge. Displaced girls and women face heightened risks of gender-based violence and trafficking, unintended pregnancy, maternal morbidity and mortality, unsafe abortions, and child, early and forced marriage. Girls and women in humanitarian settings, including those created by natural disasters, are among the world’s most vulnerable and the least visible because of the lack of sex-disaggregated data.