(In)security and (im)mobility of women: the case of Butantã campus of São Paulo University (USP)

• Grant number: 18/26112-3
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: April 01, 2019
• End date: March 31, 2020
• Field of knowledge: Applied Social Sciences - Architecture and Town Planning
• Principal Investigator: Paula Freire Santoro
• Grantee: Isabela Leite Valentim
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Arquitetura e Urbanismo (FAU). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Men and women do not live the city in a equal way: women have their circulation and ways of using the city reduced and restricted for many aspects. Among them the fear and the insecurity on the public spaces, because of the threat of sexual harassment and gender violence, that are felt especially by women, what justifies the thematic clipping of gender to approach urban mobility.This research starts from the first results obtained at the research that analised the security of the students mobility in São Paulo, with a gender focus, realized in 2018. Starts with an analysis of the first results obtained in the Butantã campus of USP/ University City in parallel with two other campus: EACH/ East USP and the Law School in Largo São Francisco. Then, develops an spatial analysis of the urban mobility conditions for women in the Butantã Campus, based on a methodology that involves accompanying participants in their daily journeys, sharing e reflecting collaboratively about the experience of the space in this route ("shadowing" method), the sensation of (in)security and its effects, as an eventual cause of the (im)mobility of women. In that way, the study proposes to look to the mobility spaces and the built spaces on the Campus in order to identify how the gender violence is expressed, giving input to future intervention proposals that could decrease the insecurity sensation and increase the possibility of safe mobility for women.