On September 30, 2025, «Ӱҵ hosted the City Hub and Network for Gender Equity (CHANGE) summit on “Gender Data & The Feminist City.” CHANGE is a network of cities globally dedicated to advancing the rights of women, girls, and people with non-binary gender identities, through testing and sharing innovative solutions.
The one-day CHANGE conference consisted of workshops, keynote and student-led presentations, and a community reception. The keynote speaker of the summit was Dr. Leslie Kern, author of Feminist City: Claiming Space in a Man-Made World. Dr. Kern flew all the way from Canada to present on “Towards a Feminist City,” where she invited the audience to think about how cities are built without concern for the discomfort and danger that women face while navigating city spaces.
Dr. Kern provided four principles for building feminist cities, or cities for women: breaking down the divide between public and private spaces; designing for care, not just safety; building from the body; and in Bell Hooks’ words, “moving the margin to the center” (CHANGE Blog).
Occidental’s collaboration with CHANGE began last spring, when Professor Madeline Baer led a DWA Task Force researching gender equity. Throughout the semester, students worked with CHANGE cities to understand how municipal governments measure gender-based violence. The Task Force produced a report comparing data collection methodologies within the network. Several students who participated in the Task Force attended the conference, including Clay Carson (‘26) and Molly Sparrow (‘25). Carson and Sparrow also gave a public presentation called “Measuring Gender Based Violence in Cities,” where they discussed the findings of the report and how data informs policy at a local level.
The day was split into four workshops centered around the main themes of Kern’s Feminist City. Workshops were a collaborative affair - delegates were divided into groups with representatives from other CHANGE cities to draw on a diverse range of experiences and knowledge. The first two workshops focused on, “How the city is planned” and “How the city is built”. Takeaways included the fact that data is not currently comprehensive enough in terms of gender disaggregation, and this data disparity can clearly be seen when it comes to physical structures that are built without women’s lifestyle patterns in mind (subway staircases without a ramp alternative for women with strollers, as one example).
In the afternoon, the workshops were centered around “How the city is lived” and “Gender data as a critical tool for gender mainstreaming in local government.” Groups drafted ideas for surveys together, with a focus on safety and care concerning how women live in cities. For the final workshop, cities worked to condense their findings from the conference into short term, middle, and long term goals, ending the day with concrete ideas for how they could incorporate their learnings into policies.
The CHANGE Summit at «Ӱҵ served as a dynamic convergence of scholarship, activism, and municipal innovation, underscoring the urgent need to rethink how cities are planned, built, and lived in through a feminist lens. Grounded in Dr. Leslie Kern’s call to action and enriched by the collaborative energy of student researchers, city delegates, and community members, the event highlighted the power of gender-disaggregated data as a tool for systemic transformation. From shaping more inclusive urban design to advancing equity-driven policy goals, the summit marked a meaningful step forward in reimagining cities that prioritize care, safety, and belonging for all genders. As cities return to their communities equipped with actionable goals, the CHANGE network continues to grow as a global catalyst for feminist urban futures.