Mainstreaming gender equality in smart cities: Theoretical, methodological and empirical challenges

The debate on local governance and urban innovation has recently gained impetus due to the diffusion of the smart city approach. A city can be defined ‘smart’ if it adopts an innovative collaborative governance style to design urban policies aimed at improving citizens’ quality of life and at promoting environmental, economic, and social sustainability. Notwithstanding the fact that civic participation and inclusion should be distinctive characteristics of smart cities, gender inequalities are often disregarded both by academic literature and in the implementation of smart strategies. The paper is aimed at filling this gap by addressing three issues. Starting from a systematic analysis of literature the paper investigates whether, where, how and why gender discriminations could emerge in a smart city. Second, it proposes a set of tools to mainstream gender in smart city governance and possible areas of intervention to reduce gender inequalities in smart cities. Third it tries to identify main theoretical, methodological, and empirical challenges for local administrators that hamper the implementation of gender equality strategies in smart cities.