Gender, difference and urban change: implications for promotion of well-being?

This article examines the impacts of urban change on the well-being of women and men, and girls and boys, living in cities, and explores how gender intersects with other social relations to differentiate these impacts. It then considers the implications of intersectionality for organisations aiming to promote the interests of specific social groups (such as women, or people with disabilities) vis-a-vis urban change by looking at the experience of Leonard Cheshire’s Asha project, working with girls and boys with disabilities in Mumbai. It concludes that organisations working to promote the interest of identity based constituents should (a) base their strategies around research that recognises the intersectional nature of social identities and (b) develop agendas for change that build agendas for social justice that unite, rather than fragment, identity based claims.