The urban space represents a scene where gender inequality still plays out. However, the Gender Mainstreaming agenda presented by The European Union, aspires to even out these gendered power disparities, through urban development. Therefore, this project wishes to investigate how different cities push this agenda forward, by doing a multiple case study of Vienna, Umeå and Berlin. Subsequently, looking at tendencies in framing across the cities, and discussing opportunities and challenges related to these. The analysis is carried out by theorizing concepts of gender, equality/equity and justice, through the lens of framing and discourses. This is done with the purpose of seeing how the three cities articulate these concepts in their urban development strategies. Afterwards the cities are compared on each concept, to see tendencies in framing of gender mainstreaming. These tendencies constitute themes that are later on discussed.
The conclusion is twofold, since it both points towards considerations in framing that would help the gender mainstreaming discourse gain momentum, but also raises a critique of the discourse. First and foremost, gender planning must be framed as a tool that challenges path dependent planning practices, instead of viewing it as an “add-on” to existing routines. This is both relevant to the recognition that men and women represent different participation patterns, that gender planning should be seen as an innovative tool rather than a bureaucratic one, and also how the vocabulary must face drastic changes in order to process a new epistemology. At the same time, the concept of gender mainstreaming is critiqued for practicing gender blindness, losing the transformative essence of the concept. A solution could be to integrate the gender concern in the concept of ‘diversity mainstreaming’ instead, to bring focus back to the power disparities between social groups. Here it would be relevant to ensure that gender is still a concern, when looking at different social inequalities within urban spaces.