Sex and the City

This paper explores the role of safety and sexual harassment risk as pivotal element for understandings in gender city debates both literature public policy Colombia, which derives from understanding women’s sexuality either “kind mothers” or “chaste women” who must protect their spaces. Using ethnographic techniques Barranquilla Cali (Colombia), we suggest that protection is tangential to concerns when thinking about mobility, space, urban dimensions. We argue putting at center by using space governance helps reproduce a power scheme women lose because they are seen childlike, vulnerable, requiring protection. defend idea need think spatially, but differently: legal geographies approach allows novel tool imagine refining approaches vulnerable subjectivities reveals how operates mechanism produce identities associated with mobility experiences its inhabitants related class axes. emphasis on organizing vector interventions reproduces gendered stereotypes men reinforces legitimizes nation-state patriarchal protector. Further, fails recognize different ways use cities, agency, strategies negotiating techniques.