Urban public spaces are not neutral; rather, they reflect deep-seated power structures and systemic inequalities that consistently and systematically restrict women's presence, access, mobility, and fundamental sense of security. These spaces are often gender-blind, shaped by norms, policies, and planning paradigms that ignore women's lived experiences, diverse needs, and daily realities, thereby perpetuating and reproducing gender-based discrimination across various urban scales. This study aims to present a comprehensive theoretical-analytical picture of the existing literature and to identify and categorize the macro dimensions of gender inequality in urban space. The primary objective is to introduce a reliable, multidimensional analytical framework for gender-sensitive urban planning and to critically highlight the significant theoretical and geographical gaps prevalent in research from Global South countries, advocating for context-specific approaches.
The present study employs a critical-narrative approach, interpreting urban spaces as socio-cultural constructs entangled with patriarchal power relations, and utilizes systematic thematic analysis as its core methodological tool. To build a robust theoretical foundation, twenty key scholarly books published between 1988 and 2024 were selected as primary resources. Their theoretical content, conceptual approaches, and central findings were meticulously compared, analyzed, and coded through an iterative process of thematic analysis. This allowed for the distillation of dominant paradigms, including feminist urban theory, intersectional analysis, and spatial justice frameworks. Additionally, to map the evolution and focus of the research field, approximately eighty related articles published between 2000 and 2024 were reviewed. These articles were further examined using advanced bibliometric techniques, specifically keyword trend mapping and co-occurrence network analysis (via VOSviewer), to visually and analytically identify central thematic clusters, emerging research trends, and intellectual connections within the literature.
The results of this integrative analysis indicate that, based on the reviewed literature, gender inequality in urban public spaces manifests in a complex, interconnected web and can be fundamentally categorized into four overarching macro dimensions: (1) structural and legal inequalities, (2) spatial and physical inequalities, (3) safety and social inequalities, and (4) cultural and normative inequalities. These four macro dimensions collectively encompass ten distinct sub-components that further detail the mechanisms of exclusion. For instance, structural inequalities include the cumulative disadvantage in property ownership—where women face significant barriers in land and asset ownership—and gendered access to housing, which often leaves women in precarious living situations. Spatial inequalities detail women's complex mobility patterns, characterized by multi-purpose "trip-chaining," and their greater reliance on often unsafe public transport systems. Safety inequalities highlight the universal prevalence of harassment and the pervasive "fear-gender paradox," where women's perceived insecurity restricts their use of public space irrespective of actual victimization rates. Cultural inequalities unpack the normative frameworks that label women as "out of place" in public without a purposeful, respectable aim, enforcing informal social controls that regulate their presence and behavior.
Importantly, these four dimensions do not operate in isolation but rather in a layered and hierarchical manner. The safety-social dimension emerges as the most immediate and daily barrier to women's presence in public spaces. The spatial-physical dimension acts as an intermediate layer that can either intensify or alleviate perceived fear. In contrast, the structural-legal and cultural-normative dimensions constitute the deeper, more durable foundations that reproduce and legitimize inequalities across all levels. This hierarchical understanding—derived directly from the thematic analysis of codes and sub-themes—provides a prioritized roadmap for urban intervention: starting with urgent safety improvements, followed by spatial redesign, and ultimately addressing structural and cultural transformations.

Furthermore, the findings reveal a strong and persistent thematic focus on issues of "fear/safety" and violence against women within the extant literature, confirming it as a primary concern shaping women's urban experience. The bibliometric analysis also shows a marked and accelerated theoretical growth in this interdisciplinary field from 2021 onwards, signaling its emergence as a vital area within urban studies, feminist geography, and planning theory. Although academic interest in gender and urban space has expanded considerably over the past two decades, the existing body of research remains theoretically fragmented and unevenly distributed. Much of the literature addresses gender inequality through isolated lenses such as safety, fear, or access, often relying on case-specific or descriptive approaches. As a result, gender inequality in urban public spaces is frequently examined as a set of discrete problems rather than as an interconnected and multidimensional phenomenon rooted in broader structural, cultural, and institutional processes. The keyword network analysis identifies "gender," "urban space," "public spaces," "violence," and "mobility" as the most interconnected and frequently co-occurring terms, emphasizing the centrality of safety and access in current research. Notably, newer themes emerging post-2019 include "social media," "violence against women," and "right to the city," indicating an evolving and expanding scholarly conversation. Moreover, the dominant theoretical frameworks in this field have largely emerged from the Global North, reflecting socio-spatial conditions that differ substantially from those of cities in the Global South. Bibliometric mapping confirms that the majority of knowledge production is concentrated in Europe and North America, with only a minimal contribution from the Global South, such as Iran. This imbalance underscores a significant epistemological gap, where theories and policies are often derived from Northern contexts and may be inappropriately applied or translated to the Global South, failing to account for distinct cultural, social, and historical specificities.
Therefore, this research underscores the essential and urgent necessity of developing localized, systematic, and culturally attuned frameworks to critically identify, analyze, and address the multifaceted nature of gender-based discrimination in urban public spaces. The proposed four-dimensional framework offers a starting point for such contextual adaptation. This endeavor is not merely academic but a practical necessity—one that can pave the way for more equitable, inclusive, and genuinely gender-sensitive urban design, policy-making, and planning in the future. The study concludes that urban planning must move beyond gender-blind or gender-neutral approaches to actively embed an intersectional gender perspective. This involves recognizing women not as a homogeneous group but as diverse citizens with a right to the city, and rethinking public spaces as realms of equal presence, safety, and social reproduction. Given the absence of a comprehensive framework—particularly within the Global South and contexts like Iran—for systematically analyzing these gendered spatial inequalities, the framework introduced in this study can serve as a fundamental benchmark. It provides a structured basis for assessing disparities, guiding future empirical research, and addressing the critical theoretical gaps in the literature, thereby fostering more contextually grounded and effective gender-sensitive planning in Iran and similar settings. Ultimately, the path toward just and humane cities depends on making gender a foundational variable in all urban planning and design processes, and on transitioning from gender-blind policies toward context-aware, gender-sensitive, and intersectional approaches that are locally grounded rather than merely translated from Global North models.
Methodologically, this study adopts a deliberately integrative and multi-layered approach that distinguishes it from much of the existing literature on gender and urban public space. Rather than relying on single-method empirical case studies or narrowly defined thematic analyses, the research combines a critical-narrative review with systematic thematic analysis and complementary bibliometric techniques. By simultaneously analyzing foundational theoretical texts and a broad corpus of articles, the study reconstructs the intellectual structure of the field across time and geography. This dual strategy enables the identification of both explicit theoretical frameworks and implicit conceptual assumptions that shape how gendered inequalities in public space are understood. The use of iterative coding across diverse sources allows for the synthesis of fragmented debates into a coherent analytical structure, while bibliometric mapping provides an additional layer of validation by empirically tracing dominant themes, gaps, and emerging trajectories within the literature. This methodological configuration moves beyond descriptive literature reviews and offers a replicable, transparent, and theoretically grounded model for synthesizing complex interdisciplinary fields.
In terms of contribution, this study provides a foundational reference point for future gender-sensitive urban research in Iran, where systematic analytical frameworks remain scarce and much existing work is either case-specific or conceptually under-theorized. By proposing a four-dimensional macro framework grounded in global theoretical debates yet explicitly attentive to Global South and Iranian socio-spatial conditions, the research offers scholars a structured lens for designing empirical studies that are both context-aware and theoretically robust. The framework can guide the formulation of research questions, indicator selection, and mixed-method designs tailored to Iranian cities, where cultural norms, legal structures, and governance arrangements uniquely shape women's experiences of public space. More importantly, the study shifts future research away from isolated examinations of fear or access toward a multidimensional understanding of gendered spatial inequality. As such, the article contributes not only a conceptual model but also a methodological orientation that can support the development of more rigorous, comparative, and locally grounded gender and urban studies in Iran.