This brief details some of the ways safe city partners from different sectors, in a short six months, have taken action in line with the recommendations set out in UN Women’s Policy brief on COVID-19 and ensuring safe cities and safe public spaces for women and girls.

The brief highlights trends and impacts of COVID-19 on women’s safety in transport. It includes examples of strategies put in place to provide safer transport modes for women and girls throughout the global pandemic, with a focus on availability, accessibility, and affordability, and makes recommendations on how different sectors can contribute to a comprehensive approach to improve women’s mobility.

The MeToo movement and much other work have increased public attention on sexual harassment. Yet, many workers still await adequate protection and enjoyment of their rights. This discussion paper focuses on sexual harassment of workers in the informal economy, with a focus on farmworkers and domestic workers. The paper provides suggestions for action by governments and civil society organizations for a world of work free from sexual harassment.

This publication illustrates in a practical way how participating cities of the Safe Cities and Safe Public Spaces Global Initiative are working to implement women’s safety approaches through the lens of intersectionality. These include a range of women-led solutions, from the creation of data, to integrated policies with meaningful participation of women’s rights organizations, to urban planning solutions that prioritize minoritized women, and prevention initiatives addressing discriminatory behaviours.

This study, based on data from 59 low- and middle-income countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, Central and Southern Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa, finds that women and their families bear the brunt of growing income inequality and failures to adequately plan for and respond to rapid urbanization. The publication examines the effects of multidimensional poverty in urban areas, with women facing greater exposure to life in slum-like conditions than men.

This report provides reviews of the activities undertaken by Member States and United Nations entities to enable women and girls, especially the poorest and most marginalized, in rural areas to improve their livelihoods, well-being and resilience in a changing climate.

Across sub-Saharan Africa, the agricultural sector remains critical to local and regional economies. Based on original research in five countries (Ethiopia, Malawi, Rwanda, Uganda, and United Republic of Tanzania), this policy brief shows that gender gaps in agricultural productivity do not arise because women are less efficient farmers but because they experience inequitable access to agricultural inputs, including family labour, high-yield crops, pesticides, and fertilizer.

Few programmes for economically empowering rural women in India have focused seriously on farming—the one occupation in which the women have most experience. This paper examines whether group farming can enable women farmers to overcome resource constraints and gain economically.

This paper looks to our understanding of the gendered implications of rural land dispossession through a comparative analysis of five cases that were driven by different economic purposes in diverse agrarian contexts. It identifies some of the common gendered effects of land dispossession, and demonstrates ways in which the gendered consequences of land dispossession vary qualitatively across cases. It was produced for UN Women’s flagship report, World Survey on the Role of Women in Development 2014: Gender and Sustainable Development. It is now also released as part of the UN Women discussion paper series.

In this brief, learn more about how the New Urban Agenda strategically supports mainstreaming gender equality and women’s empowerment across all social development goals.