RE-CONSTRUCTING GENDER AND SPACE: SINGLE WOMEN'S ACCESS TO AND EXPERIENCES OF PUBLIC SPACES IN THE METROPOLITAN CITY OF DELHI, INDIA

Abstract

This thesis analyses middle-class, young, single women’s lived experiences of urban public spaces in Delhi, India. By focusing on how women experience, occupy and transform public spaces, I argue for the need for a critical understanding of the complexity of women’s urban lives and associated gendered spatio-temporalities. I devise the framework of ‘Relational Plurality’ to argue that gendered experiences and womanhood unfold through women’s socio-spatial relationships, politics, and urban spatio-temporalities, which are intensely interconnected in the (re)production of the gendered city. I further argue that women’s urban lives are relational realities where gendered exclusion and contestations of the same are not separate terrains but are constitutive of one another. In other words, gendered exclusions lead to the formation of gendered political practices, and vice versa. As a result, the gendered urban order constantly evolves and transforms through women’s experiences, practices, and politics, and so do the women.