Gendered sustainability: Are public spaces designed for girls good for everyone? Examining female participation as a strategy for inclusive public space

This article examines female participation as a strategy for sustainable development. The increasing interest in female participation as a sustainability strategy on an international scale, underscores the need for critical examinations of this approach. Centring on contemporary Sweden as a prominent site of this development, this article investigates the municipal use of gendered design processes and gender-sensitive policies. Drawing on the study of five public spaces, this article discusses categorization and processes of inclusion/exclusion and ordination/subordination in relation to the design and use of public spaces. Central to the analysis is a recurring ambivalence identified in the material, where spaces are referred to both as spaces for girls and spaces for everyone. The authors argue that spaces can only fulfil the double demand of being for girls and for everyone if we accept that girls stay subordinated to boys in their use of public space. Drawing on an analysis of the interplay of inclusion/exclusion and ordination/subordination they propose a generalizable model of participation and public space. The article concludes by advocating for the creation of spaces for girls and the creation of spaces for everyone to be treated as two related yet separate tasks.