Gendered Spaces and the Body Politics: Reading Women in Urban South Asia

Abstract

Urban spaces in South Asia are deeply gendered, shaped by historical power relations, cultural norms, and political structures that regulate women’s mobility, visibility, and participation in public life. This article examines how women experience, negotiate, and contest urban spaces in South Asian cities, with a particular focus on Pakistan. Drawing on feminist geography and political sociology, the study argues that the city is not a neutral landscape but a political arena where gendered hierarchies are reproduced and challenged. Women’s access to streets, transport, workplaces, and civic spaces is mediated by class, religion, safety discourses, and state governance. At the same time, women actively re-imagine and politicize urban space through everyday practices, labor participation, protest movements, and digital activism. By reading women’s spatial experiences as political acts, this article highlights how urban South Asia becomes a site of both exclusion and resistance, offering insights into gendered citizenship and urban governance.