"The papers explore women's engagement in both paid work, which is often informal and subject to increasing insecurity and low earnings, and unpaid work, which results in time poverty for women. It also discusses differential access to shelter and basic services and their importance for safety, security and well-being."--Publisher' s Website.

Developing regions are set to account for the vast majority of future urban growth, and women and girls will become the majority inhabitants of these locations in the Global South. This is one of the first books to detail the challenges facing poorer segments of the female population who commonly reside in ‘slums’. It explores the variegated disadvantages of urban poverty and slum-dwelling from a gender perspective. This book revolves around conceptualisation of the ‘gender-urban-slum interface’ which explains key elements to understanding women’s experiences in slum environments. It has a specific focus on the ways in which gender inequalities are can be entrenched but also alleviated. Included is a review of the demographic factors which are increasingly making cities everywhere ‘feminised spaces’, such as increased rural-urban migration among women, demographic ageing, and rising proportions of female-headed households in urban areas. Discussions focus in particular on education, paid and unpaid work, access to land, property and urban services, violence, intra-urban mobility, and political participation and representation. This book will be of use to researchers and professionals concerned with gender and development, urbanisation and rural-urban migration.

It is increasingly being recognized that effective management of the urbanization process across India is going to be imperative to ensure equitable and sustained development. Economic growth and gender equality are positively correlated. Although gender issues have been widely debated in the context of urbanization and urban poverty alleviation policy framework, it has yet to be addressed perceptibly. Encapsulating insightful policy recommendations exclusively on urban poverty and gender issues is the need of the hour for successful implementation of existing programmes, alongside keeping tabs on emerging issues relevant to the India Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation. The State of the Urban Poor Report 2015 has been envisaged keeping in mind the critical need to examine gender issues relevant to urban poverty alleviation practices and mechanisms, as well as to find ways of bringing gender sensitivity into the urban management practices in India. The papers in this volume focus on themes such as dimensions of urban poverty; current urban poverty alleviation approaches; gender, shelter, and property rights; urban livelihoods; ensuring urban safety through gender sensitive approach; and access to basic urban services through gender perspective.

The contributors respond to the absence of critical debate surrounding the ways in which spaces of the city do not merely contain, but also constitute, urban poverty. The volume explores how the spaces of the city actively produce and reproduce urban poverty.