Gender and citizenship in Tehran, a sociological study of gender differences in the right to the city

Doctoral Dissertation in the field of Sociology of Social Issues in Iran

Abstract

The right to the city of Lefort includes two components of allocating the city to oneself or using the city and participation in the city, and by presenting a Marxist critique of urban inequality, it raises the issue that the urban space is built in line with the demands of the capitalist system, the ruling class and without regard to the needs of the lower classes. In this research, according to the importance of the individual and his perception of space and spatial actions in Lefebvre's theory, and relying on the concept of perceived space, which refers to the perception of social actors towards the urban matter, it has been measured the degree of realization of the right to the city. On the other hand, the city, both in its physical existence and in its social existence, belongs less to women and is less suitable for women's participation in the ongoing processes in it. This problem is related to the reduction of women's mobility in the city, the monopoly of spaces by men, the neglect of the female body in urban design, and so on. It has resulted in women not enjoying the right to the city as much as men.  By using the theoretical framework presented by Henri Lefebvre and operationalizing his idea of ??the right to the city, besides testing the theory in the context of Tehran's citizenship, this article tries to reveal the existing gender differences in benefiting from the perception of the right to the city and to show that the daily life processes of women in the city have been disrupted due to their not enjoying their rights. The studied population is 879 men and women living in Tehran city, who were selected using multi-stage cluster sampling technique. After collecting the data using the survey method, firstly, the relationship between the concept of the right to the city and its six explanatory variables, i.e., vitality, space control, space share, space production, urban organization and decision-making in the city was measured using multivariate regression, and then the basic differences of the right to the city between female respondents and male respondents were extracted using logistic regression and cluster analysis in Spiasas software version 16 and using the theoretical framework of the right to the city. The city of Lefort has been analyzed. To measure class differences in enjoying the right to the city, the correlation between the estimates of this concept with income indicators and place of residence was used. And cluster analysis has been used to classify the regions of Tehran into cooperative clusters based on the conceptual structure provided by Arnstein. The qualitative method (19 interviews) was also used to verify the quantitative findings, while the gender mechanisms of perception of the components of the right to the city were investigated. The results of this research show that the theory of the right to the city and its conceptualization of the components influencing the perception of benefiting from the right to the city can be applied in the city of Tehran, and based on its claim, the right to the city has a class nature. Although Lefebvre has remained within the limits of the patriarchal tradition regarding the relationship between space and body, in this research, the significance of the concept of gender in enjoying the right to the city in Tehran was shown, both statistically and by using qualitative indicators.

Key words: Assignment, gender, right, city, class, space, participation.    

- Introduction

A city is a collection of spaces. Spaces that are one of the aspects of distinguishing the urban environment from the non-urban environment (rural, natural, untouched and other words that can be placed in front of the city). Space is a perceptual concept[1]. The perception of space cannot be considered as a unified element that is the same in all people. A single space can be perceived in different ways depending on age, gender, ethnicity, social class and other cultural, social, economic and demographic variables.

For example, the image that a child has of an advertising billboard of a chocolate company is an image of regret, for a working woman who has four small children and for an old woman who is suffering from diabetes, it is also a regret, but this "regret" only has the same title and its nature is not the same in the perception of the mentioned people. Because every feeling or knowledge arises from different origins. An advertising billboard can create a feeling of incongruity for someone who is averse to sweets and disgust for an animal rights supporter [2] and a person who has anti-capitalist tendencies probably pays more attention to the face of capitalism and the profit cycle that lies behind the installation of this billboard than being attracted to the billboard. The difference in attitude of these people is due to the nature of socio-cultural differences.If a simple urban billboard can create such distinct ideas in the minds of the viewers, it should be expected that people's perceived perception [3] of the relationships they establish with "things" and "spaces" in the city and the feelings that arise from this relationship will also be different depending on the social and individual context.

As long as we accept the premise of the existence of a relationship between urban spaces and people's attitudes, we will come to the conclusion that people's social relationships are also affected by urban spaces. Because the connection between cognitions and emotions with behaviors and actions is obvious from a sociological point of view. Considering the importance of gender as a fundamental determining factor in people's socialization methods, it is predicted that the attitudes of men and women will be different towards spatial components, and as a result, spatial actions and behaviors will appear differently in the two genders.

For example, a dark alley in a male athlete who goes to the gym with a sports bag does not produce the same perception as in a fifteen-year-old girl who returns home from class. Waiting for a young woman for a taxi on the side of a highway is not the same experience that a man faces. But what is the distinguishing element of these perceptions? What scares a fifteen-year-old girl from a dark alley or the feeling of a woman standing next to the highway waiting for a taxi, that is, the "feeling of insecurity" caused by the spatial settings, is not caused by the sex of these people, but is a function of the spatial components and the position of these people in the society to which they belong. We assume that the feeling of insecurity is a lived experience for urban women. But does the city itself create this fear? It seems not so. The same woman, when she is standing with another person (especially if she is a man) at the same point of the highway, her feeling of insecurity is greatly reduced. Therefore, the urban location by itself cannot be the cause of the feeling of insecurity in the activists. A woman walks alone in the city center without feeling unsafe. Maybe the reason is the presence and gathering of people in the city center. But are the people who ride their cars on the highway different from these people? What makes the difference between the city center and the highway is the way the spatial components are arranged. The presence of people is a constant element both on the highways and in the city center. What differentiates the highway is the type of space design that has moved pedestrians into their cars. The freeway space deprives people of the ability to walk by removing sidewalks. A person imagines himself as a disturbing element in a space where no one is supposed to walk. But this feeling takes different forms according to gender. Women's perception of this kind of partial violation of norms is something different from men's perception. For a woman, a lonely alley in the middle of the day, a dark street, next to the freeway, in a taxi where the other passengers are all men, the seat in front of the same taxi, pedestrian bridges, dead ends, lonely parks, under big bridges, neighborhoods that have been labeled as unsafe or notorious for any reason, lonely suburbs, narrow sidewalks, streets where men's businesses are located [5], public restrooms, Lonely public transport buses (especially at the beginning and end of the day), even one's own home when he is alone, private non-taxi cars that work in public transport, all evoke the idea of ??insecurity.

This feeling of insecurity can be rooted in the individual's own direct experiences, indirect experiences of the individual (his relatives), the collective memory of citizens of these spaces and to a large extent the shape of urban spaces. A person who has been attacked once in a dark alley is unlikely to feel safe when passing through the same places again. If his friend or sister has narrated a similar experience to him, his imagination of the space that has been created in his mind can lead to the feeling of insecurity in spaces similar to the previously imagined spaces. The experiences that the citizens of a city have of violence in different urban spaces can be recorded in a collective memory and they feel it towards similar spaces. If a city has an unfortunate experience in the near future, such as people being kidnapped on the highway, it cannot be expected that its citizens will feel safe enough to be on the highway. A collective memory in the city can be a determining element in how citizens view urban spaces and relationships.