Advancing an agenda for women in planning: an epilogue

ABSTRACT

This paper serves as an epilogue to the Women in Planning special issue of Australian Planner reflecting on the potential for women’s activism and scholarship to promote social and spatial change around what have often been dismissed as irrelevant private or personal matters. This paper highlights the energy and willingness among women planners and those sympathetic to their goals towards seeking and creative positive and transformative change and engagement with issues of gender in planning. It specifically reports on the Women in Planning Symposium, held in Brisbane in 2016, and based on the principles of Appreciative Inquiry. Through this case we do not set out to ‘prove’ the impact of feminist approaches to planning or Appreciative Inquiry as applied in this workshop, rather, our goal here is to conclude this special issue by advancing an agenda for women in planning which is transformative, generative and pro-feminist and which has the potential to highlight and address gendered concerns in a productive way. We will reflect on both the findings that Appreciative Inquiry yielded, and on the process itself as a tool for participation and engagement, particularly in a feminist/emancipatory context.

KEYWORDS:

• Women in planning
• gender
• feminist planning
• feminism
• Appreciative Inquiry

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to acknowledge the efforts of Caryl Bosman for leading the Women in Planning Symposium and this special issue. The authors also acknowledge the contributions of all speakers and the Women in Planning Symposium: Brittany Lauga MP, Carolyn Whitzman, Carolyn Vincent, Dianne Dredge, Donnell Davis, Kellie Burns, Kirsty Kelly, Laurel Johnson, Madonna Thomas, Nicole Laffoley and Stephanie Wyeth. Thanks are also extended to Blake Morgan, Rachael Cole-Hawthorne and Merrill Bowers for administrative and other support at the Symposium, and to Renee Chapman of Renee Chapman Photography for her interviewing, filming and photography on the day.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Natalie Osborne http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9430-822X

Notes

1 The Women in Planning Symposium was advertised as being welcome to all genders, but few men attended. This unfortunately reflects the common assumption that gender equity – and indeed other forms of justice for those marginalised in planning – is ‘women’s work’.

Additional information

Funding

Financial support for the Women in Planning Symposium was provided by the Queensland Government’s Advance Queensland Fund, QUT Work/Industry Futures Research Program, University of Queensland, and Griffith University.