Gender, Asset Accumulation and Just Cities

Pathways to transformation

Caroline O.N. Moser

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781138024014
• eBook ISBN: 9781317689492
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

With more than half the world's population now living in urban areas, urbanisation is undoubtedly one of the most important phenomena of the 21st century. However, despite increasing recognition of the critical relationship between economic and social development in cities, gender issues are often overlooked in understanding the complexities of current urbanisation processes. This book seeks to rectify this neglect.

Gender, Asset Accumulation and Just Cities explores the contribution that a focus on the gendered nature of asset accumulation brings to the goal of achieving just, more equitable cities. To date neither the academic debates nor the formulated policy and practice on just cities has included a focus on gender-based inequalities, discriminations, or opportunities. From a gender perspective, a separate discourse exists, closely associated with gender justice, particularly in relation to urban rights and democracy. Neither, however, has addressed the implications for women's accumulation of assets and associated empowerment for transformational pathways to just cities.

In this book, contributors specifically focus on gender and just cities from a wide range of gendered perspectives that include households, housing, land, gender-based violence, transport, climate, and disasters.

1 Introduction

Towards a nexus linking gender, assets, and transformational pathways to just cities

Caroline O.N. Moser

The twenty-first century is undoubtedly an urban age. However, despite increasing recognition of the critical relationship between Global South cities and their countries’ economic and social development, and a proliferation of international programmes to support their greater ‘sustainability’ and ‘resilience’, important gaps remain in understanding the complexities of current urbanisation processes. One limitation relates to gender; while the gendered nature of urban poverty has been widely debated, both theoretically and empirically,¹ the gendered nature of urban asset ownership, and the accumulation of asset portfolios, has received far less attention (Moser 2008; 2009). This book seeks to rectify this neglect, and in so doing to explore the contribution that a focus on the gendered nature of asset accumulation brings to the goal of achieving just, more equitable cities.

From an asset perspective the relationship between gender and just cities has two sides, or faces. On the one hand are gender-related constraints to achieving just cities, through persistent gender-based inequalities, disparities, and exclusions in access to financial, physical, productive, human and social capital. Affecting these are structural ‘driving forces’ such as economic globalisation, demographic transition, and associated urban spatial agglomeration, as well as political change, climate change and disasters, and violence and insecurity. Related intermediary factors, or barriers, include cultural norms affecting gendered divisions of labour and female mobility, which have implications not only for earnings but also for rights to participate in urban public life. On the other hand, through their agency in the choice of solutions and interventions to accumulate or to adapt assets, women seek to empower themselves, with impacts both on poverty reduction and on increased equality. Accumulated assets may not only empower women, but also may successfully challenge power relations in a transformative manner, thereby contributing to just, and more inclusive, cities.

The framework of gendered asset pathways to empowerment and transformation, elaborated and illustrated diagrammatically later, in Figure 1.1, informs this introduction as well as guiding all the subsequent chapters in this book. By way of introducing the framework, this chapter starts with a brief summary of the context, which defines the book’s relevance, before introducing three background issues that comprise conceptual debates as well as operational concerns. First, it describes the asset accumulation framework; second, it identifies the nexus linking gender, assets, and just cities; and third, it reviews academic feminist debates on the conceptualisation of ‘transformation’. In sum, these three issues provide the background for the introduction of a framework of gendered asset pathways to empowerment and transformation that contribute to achieving more equal, just cities. Finally, the chapter briefly introduces relevant perspectives and debates on a range of gendered asset pathways explored in detail in the chapters that follow.

Two contextual issues are of particular relevance at the outset. First is the development of a conceptual framework and associated operational programme addressing a wide range of asset-related issues in cities of the Global South, which I have developed, together with colleagues, over the past decade. Initially this focused on asset accumulation and associated intergenerational poverty reduction (see Moser 1998; 2007; 2009); subsequently its focus extended to asset erosion as a consequence of urban violence and conflict (see Moser and McIlwaine 2004; 2006), and most recently has addressed issues relating to community-based asset adaptation to climate change (see Moser and Satterthwaite 2010; Moser and Stein 2011; Stein and Moser 2014). While gender issues have been ‘mainstreamed’ throughout this work, to date, with one exception (see Moser and Felton 2010) it has not focused specifically on the gendered accumulation, erosion, or adaptation of assets.

A second contextual issue concerns the increased focus on urbanisation processes in the Global South and the politico-economic tension between the potential for economic growth and progress, associated with improved standards of living, jobs, and housing, and the concrete reality in which the majority of the population still contend with substandard housing, poor infrastructure, unsafe and unsanitary conditions, and significant social isolation, all of which constrain their access to economic opportunities. Associated with this is a body of research and practice on the conceptualisation of ‘just cities’. Lefebvre (1991), for instance, articulates this in terms of ‘rights’ to the city, as the inclusion of all city users within its space. Fainstein (2011) in turn associates the ‘building’ of just cities with equity, democracy, diversity, and intersectionality. In their Just City Initiative, the Ford Foundation identify a need to build truly just cities, shaped by fairness, opportunity and a commitment to shared prosperity. The programme states that ‘the struggles of urban transformation – from the need for basic services to the rising demands of a growing middle class – will test countries’ capacities to foster prosperity, social justice, sustainability and resilience’.² Thus it argues that the challenge of making urban growth more socially inclusive, in terms of both processes and outcomes, needs to be achieved within the fields that are driving metropolitan growth and change – urban planning, housing, and transportation infrastructure.

To date neither the academic debates nor the formulated policy and practice on ‘just cities’ has included a focus on gender-based inequalities, discriminations, or opportunities. From a gender perspective, a separate discourse exists, closely associated with gender justice, particularly in relation to urban rights and democracy (Molyneux and Razavi 2002; UN-HABITAT 2013). Neither, however, has addressed the implications for women’s accumulation of assets and associated empowerment for just cities. In this book, therefore, contributors specifically focus on gender and ‘just cities’ from a wide range of gendered perspectives that include households, housing, land, gender-based violence, transport, climate and disasters.

Conceptual background: the asset accumulation framework

This section provides the conceptual background for further exploring gendered asset pathways to empowerment and transformation. It briefly introduces the main components of the asset accumulation framework, one of a number of approaches first developed in relation to the diagnosis of poverty, as well as urban poverty reduction interventions, in terms of the following three questions.

What is an asset? Is it an instrumental or transformative concept?

An asset is generally defined as a ‘stock of financial, human, natural or social resources that can be acquired, developed, improved and transferred across generations. It generates flows or consumptions as well as additional stock’ (Ford Foundation 2004). The extensive debate about the ‘technification’ and ‘decontextualisation’ of poverty provides a useful background for a parallel debate as to whether an asset is an instrumental or transformative concept. As Harriss (2007) argues, the ‘depoliticisation’ of poverty reduces poverty to the characteristics of individuals or households, abstracted from class and other power relations. It fails to recognise poverty as ‘multi-dimensional’ deprivation, rather than just a lack of income, that includes a lack of capabilities, assets, entitlements and rights. In reality, poverty is a social relation, not an absolute condition. Poverty is not a thing to be ‘attacked’ but rather the outcome of specific social relations that require investigation and transformation (Green 2006).³

In a similar manner, assets are not simply resources that people use to build livelihoods. As Bebbington (1999) argues, assets give people the capability to be and to act. Thus the acquisition of assets is not a passive act but one that creates agency and is linked to the empowerment of individuals and communities (Sen 1997). The concept of asset accumulation draws on theoretical and policy-focused literature on asset-based development approaches (Sherraden 1991; Carter and Barrett 2006), but emphasises the importance of context and political economy both associated with the distribution of economic resources and political power. Assets exist, not in isolation but embedded within social processes, structures, and power relationships, all of which mediate access to them and the accumulation of their value.

Assets can be tangible and intangible, and individual or collective, depending on the asset type. The most widely recognised assets are natural, physical, social, financial, and human capital (see Box 1.1). The identification of these assets related to the fact that they could be econometrically measured in an asset matrix (see Moser and Felton 2009; Moser 2009). However, a far broader range of non-tangible, often symbolic assets exists, influenced, among others, by the work of Bourdieu (1986; 1990; see also McIlwaine 2012). These include aspirational (Appadurai 2004), psychological (Alsop et al. 2006), civic (Ginieniewicz and Castiglione 2011), and political assets, most commonly associated with human rights (Ferguson et al. 2007).

Box 1.1 Definitions of widely recognised tangible and intangible capital assets

Physical capital: the stock of plant, equipment, infrastructure, and other productive resources. This includes housing and consumer durables owned by individuals and households, as well as infrastructure and other collective assets.

Financial capital: the financial resources accumulated by people through wages, income-generating activities, and savings credit. This includes transfer income from rent or remittances.

Human capital: investments in education, health, and the nutrition of individuals. Labour is linked to investments in human capital; health status determines people’s capacity to work; and skills and education determine the returns from their labour.

Social capital: an intangible asset, defined as the rules, norms, obligations, reciprocity, and trust embedded in social relations, social structures, and societies’ institutional arrangements. It is embedded within informal institutions within communities, and within households, as well as in formal institutions in the market-place, the political system, and civil society.

Natural capital: the stock of environmentally provided assets such as soil, atmosphere, forests, minerals, water, and wetlands. In rural communities land is a critical productive asset for the poor; in urban areas land for shelter is also a critical productive asset.

Source: adapted from Moser (2009)

What is an asset accumulation framework?

In debates about asset-based approaches, ‘asset building’ and ‘asset accumulation’ are overlapping, often conflated terms. However, in both the academic and policy-focused literature, ‘asset building’ is more closely associated with a US debate about increasing the state’s institutional support to assist the poor build assets (Boshara and Sherraden 2004), while asset accumulation is more commonly associated with the Global South context, where the state’s role is more limited and the process of acquiring and consolidating assets is not only lengthy but also primarily achieved ‘bottom-up’ by individuals, households, and local communities themselves (Moser 2007, 2; 2008).

An asset accumulation framework can be identified in terms of two related tools or instruments. First is an asset index, an analytical and diagnostic tool for understanding poverty dynamics and mobility. It quantitatively or qualitatively measures the accumulation, adaptation, or erosion of different assets over time and clarifies the interrelationship between different assets within an asset portfolio. Second is an asset accumulation policy, an associated operational instrument that focuses on creating opportunities for low-income people to accumulate and sustain complex asset portfolios. Asset accumulation policy is not a set of top-down interventions. Although it may include interventions that concentrate on strengthening individual assets, it is essentially a framework that provides an enabling environment with clear rules, norms, regulations, and support structures to allow households and communities to identify and take advantage of opportunities to accumulate assets and overcome inequalities and barriers to justice.

To facilitate asset accumulation as later shown diagrammatically in Figure 1.1, it is necessary to recognise three interrelated processes.⁴ First are the driving forces in the wider structural context that have direct and indirect impacts on accumulation, adaptation, or erosion of assets at household and intra-household level. These include the urban economic context, the city planning processes, environmental factors (particularly in relation to climate-change related changing weather conditions) and security (associated with levels of conflict and v...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• List of contributors
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction: towards a nexus linking gender, assets, and transformational pathways to just cities
• 2 Female household headship as an asset?
• 3 Longitudinal and intergenerational perspectives on gendered asset accumulation in Indio Guayas, Guayaquil, Ecuador
• 4 Key drivers of asset erosion and accumulation in informal employment: findings from the Informal Economy Monitoring Study
• 5 Addressing gendered inequalities in access to land and housing
• 6 The gendered contradictions in South Africa’s state housing: accumulation alongside an undermining of assets through housing
• 7 ‘The devil is in the detail’: understanding how housing assets contribute to gender-just cities
• 8 Routes to the just city: towards gender equality in transport planning
• 9 Gender-based violence and assets in just cities: triggers and transformation
• 10 The gendered destruction and reconstruction of assets and the transformative potential of ‘disasters’
• 11 Challenging stereotypes about gendered vulnerability to climate change: asset adaptation in Mombasa and Cartagena
• Index