On women, pans, and politics: imagining decolonial gendered urban spatialities

ABSTRACT Over the past decades, several collective urban experiments led by women in Latin America have revealed female reproductive work as a critical element in effectuating the right to the city. Amid a global crisis of social reproduction exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, it is pressing to ask: What tools are available to imagine a production of space that is effectively feminist, anti-racist, and decolonial? Drawing from proposals from Latin American feminist authors, I discuss how the combination of patriarchy, capitalism, and colonialism has shaped social reproduction and modes of resistance. To do so, I reflect on the experience of a group of women living and working together in an ocupação in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. The analysis uses data from research carried out in 2018, involving interviews, informal conversations, and participant observation. These women’s experiences allow us to understand how these practices create theory that relates to their reality.