Environmental and Social synthesis
1987 UN Conference:  Sustainability is the phenomenon in which the present needs are  met without compromising on the ability of the future generations to meet their needs

Oxford: Gender is either of the two sexes (male and female), when considered with reference to social and cultural differences rather than biological ones.

What happens when the power responsible for the whole human kind lies solely on the half of it? When only half of the population is made aware of the power they are bestowed upon to change the world they live in? I believe that only that half gets to live their beliefs whereas the latter is left to adjust and compromise.
The world thrives on dualism. One principle but various perceptions.
Patriarchy structure creates dualism and shapes social structure, philosophy of science and culture. By placing one element below the other within a hierarchical system, thus marginalising it. Dualism such as culture/nature, male/female, and mind/body facilitate exploiting of lower element.

But a utopian society establishes itself when every individual gets to express themselves under a collective consensus, where opposites reinforce each other, become mutual references and an integral part of the self-balancing system via continuum and endurance in other words a sustainable system. Where each entity is complete in itself yet a part of the bigger picture when they together and collaborates to form a world for the greater good not just for the present but for generations to come.

“Architecture is the needed built space through which voices are shaped and heard”
Architecture as a tool alone is not enough for the successful implementation of the intent desired. Public policies are the mechanisms through which processes are institutionalized thus making it the other half of the solution. Through ministries and planning institutions responsible for social, financial, fiscal and credit policies, actions are articulated to respond to the development model. Through public policies, governments develop programs and allocate resources to rectify social inequalities and improve the population’s living conditions.

The intention is the detailed study of policies accompanied with architecture leading to flexible, locally managed, user oriented, collaborative, decentralised spaces, in other words sustainability.

Why women?
Study proves that war, climate change, poverty makes women their greatest victims. It also proves women often lead the way in adapting to climate change impacts, but they also play a key role in mitigating climate change by optimizing energy efficiency, using low foot print sources and techniques and influencing a household and community’s consumption patterns.

Victims
“We know when we are created that this will be our life”, says Gale Deyknto from Kenya as she begins to hoist a Gerry can of water weighing 80 pounds onto her back. To find water she may have to walk for two hours or 2 days, up and down mountains, across desserts, risking attack by men who do not want her water but her body. Some villages in India, where water is scarce some men marry twice or thrice just to have someone fetch water and the women are called “the water wives”.

According to a recent survey by Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations, International fund for agricultural development and the international labour office, it was observed that women are more engaged in daily waged seasonal occupation such as agriculture then men, therefore leading to an understanding of how climate change could affect the food sources and in turn the livelihood of women.

Adaptation
In Nepal, women farmers avoid crop failures in the face of changing weather patterns by growing off-season vegetables and bananas, which are more resilient to flood and drought. In Jordan, women’s management of small scale irrigation projects and involvement in water harvesting and soil conservation improves the efficiency of water use. In Tanzania when men migrate from home for longer periods due to climate change, women take the role of livestock herding and pasture management. In Nicaragua, following a disaster, women were actively involved in evacuating those at risk, transporting materials to clear roads, organizing food collection brigades and health carry campaigns.
If women had the same access to the resources as male farmers do, farm yields would increase by 20-30 percent and the number of hungry people could be reduced by 12-12 percent (FAO, 2011). In face new data reveals that when gender inequality is high, forest depletion, air pollution and other measure of environmental degradation is also high (UNDP, 2011)

Mitigation
The sustainability paradigm can only be realised through social sustainability that is in a social organisation that lacks hierarchy and non-competitiveness.

Eco feminism:
"The birth of a girl child is celebrated in my village," says Sulakshana Kumari, a resident from the Dharhara village of Indian state Bihar. "We sing songs when a child is born and plant mango trees. These trees are our family." More importantly, the village’s collective effort in planting trees is bearing fruit: Dharhara has a higher female-male ratio than the national average.
In 1947, commercial contractors threatened the forests of Reni in northern India, which provided the woman with food, fuel, home supplies, and marketing opportunities. The commercial felling of trees also led to rapid ecological destabilization. In order to combat commercial contractors, the woman hugged the trees of their forests.
Since 1977, Green Belt Movement, communities have planted over 51 million trees in Kenya, in watersheds in the highlands of Mt. Kenya, the Aberdares, and the Mau Complex- three of the five major mountain ecosystems in Kenya, as well as on private lands, an initative led by Nobel prize winner and ecofeminist Wangari Maathai.

“We are either going to have a future where women lead the way to make peace with the Earth or we are not going to have a human future at all”- Vandana Shiva, Indian scholar, environmental activist and anti-globalization author

Eco feminism is a practice which believes in empowering themselves via re empowering nature in order to combat male dominance and ecological crisis. They assert that powerlessness and inequality – perpetuated by a modern, male-dominated social structure – are the root causes of environmental degradation and the pressures it puts on humans, such as famine and a lack of access to clean water.

An ecofeminist vision of architecture would oppose subordination to nature in human design via an excessive consumerism of materials and resources. This architecture would also in its form, choice of materials, orientation, shape and contour and method of construction, express a holistic connectedness with nature such as the vernacular, indigenous and organic architecture and also the architecture which has translated these traditions as per the needs of the modern society.
A quest that gender injustice and equitable social transformation is taking place in the midst of ecological crisis that threatens all life and to engage and find methods of how sustainability and gender equality can be collaborated and worked upon.
Nature is broad and varied and has been subjected to different forms of encroachment, any appropriate assessment in the domination of nature has to be based on a large extent on the resolution of other forms of oppression and should play a unifying role.
 

Women
The women give birth to a new generation, they are the ones who quantitatively and qualitatively provide for the family in terms of resources, they know the resources required by them to ensure possibility of a future to inhabit them. Since generation we are aware that women are neurotically more emotional and men more practical and due to women’s gathering resources like wood, water and forest products, not to mention subsistence agriculture, women have a unique understanding of the natural resources around them. However, if women are not specifically included in the design of built spaces and policies this knowledge can be lost. The presence of diverse viewpoints makes for a more holistic and ecosystem-wide approach to both gender and climate change.

Gender mainstreaming
“The city is an organised memory, and in history women are the forgotten”
-Hannah Arendt, Jewish American political theorist

Men and women have different needs at different times. Their movement patterns and how they perceive the spaces in terms of safety and security are qualitatively different than those of men. For this reason urban planning, policy making, community services and major decision making has to include women to free them from violence and the risks to their safety posed by inadequate infrastructure, services and poorly planned urban spaces.
 

“When I have to work overtime at night, I often feel afraid of robbery, rape and harassment because it’s very dark o the way back home” –Woman garment factory worker, Phnom Penh, Cambodia

The safety and security of public space are central concerns of gender equitable planning. The key principle of “seeing and been seen” aims at promoting (desirable) social control, providing effective guidance and ensuring visibility and efficient illumination. The incorporation of mapping potential unsafe places for women, and making changes for existing infrastructure also includes women and their right to city.

“We always live in a constant condition of fear. We are worried about not having a place to vend. We fear robberies when we go out in the morning and return late-night. Most of us do not have a house of our own. We are mistreated by many from the home to society because we are poor” – Woman focus group, Addis Ababa, Ethopia

Infrastructure as part of architecture when disengages from its duty to serve the needful in the most basic forms such as toilets, the consequences faced by the womanhood goes a long way. It excludes women from public spaces, and thus schools, colleges, workspaces, spaces of engagement etc. This exclusion results in lack of education and exposure to the outside world, leading them to lack of confidence and thus rendering them incapable of having their voices heard.
Infrastructure also excludes working mothers due to poor land use zoning separating residential areas with land use zoning separating residential areas from employment locations, as women are most associated with care, their travel patterns include more number of spaces for spaces in terms of work, child care, shopping and care associated with old aged people.
Infrastructure excludes women from leisure activities by not providing community gardens and green spaces which are accessible and more community oriented in order to achieve security.
Here we see how architecture in the form of infrastructure can facilitate the awareness of paradigm shift (women or collaborative power, women participation in home making, leadership and policy making), thus leading to promotion of; sustainability, and the study of this shift, the methods adopted, the common underlying elements that unify the world through this effort and the ability to replicate this effort via the extensive research study is one of the major intents.

Long term solutions
“You cannot protect environment unless you empower people, inform them and help them understand that these resources are their own and that they must protect them”
-Wangari Mathaai, Kenyan environmental political activist and Nobel laureate
Inculcation of gender sensitivity into educational institutes is a must as the idea is to cut of violence from the source. It is necessary for us to make the unaware aware, and the aware a way to be.
Inequitable distribution of resources is one of the major reasons for no education, unawareness and thus poverty, suppression and compromised lifestyles.
Education is also the most ideal solution as surveillance of public spaces is not an effective solution to deter violence. It assumes that the only reason for violence is circumstantial, and that if circumstances were prevented or closely monitored, then violence would recede. This does not take into consideration the underlying causes of violence.

For one to see another beyond all the physical realities and to see the light within them, is when the barriers break, and they truly, entirely become genderless.