1. Introduction
Since the 1990s, the European Union has been promoting integrated intervention initiatives in disadvantaged urban areas. These aim to improve the conditions and quality of life of the population living in these areas using an integral approach. This entails engaging different areas of public policy that explain the processes of socio-spatial exclusion and vulnerability in the urban sphere (housing, employment, education, etc.), since exclusion is a multidimensional phenomenon [
1,
2].
Urban development initiatives from an integral perspective are a key element in the European Union’s Cohesion Policy [
3], having expanded its policy frame from the regeneration of disadvantaged urban areas to sustainable urban development. Its objectives have been extended from the three pillars of the former approach (physical, economic, and social) to encompass those related to governance and environmental sustainability. That is, from a policy frame focused on neighbourhood revitalisation to a broader one focused on promoting sustainable communities, both at the scale of individual neighbourhoods and larger-scale urban areas [
4,
5].
In addition to these aspects, related to the objectives of these initiatives, from a procedural point of view, the urban dimension of the EU’s Cohesion Policy is characterised by a ‘meso-level’ approach, in line with the principle of adaptability and the place-based orientation of the EU’s Cohesion Policy [
6,
7]. Local authorities design and implement specific strategies tailored to the socio-spatial characteristics of the urban areas they target but within the context of the general policy frame promoted by the EU. Thus, the latter sets out the general purposes and implementation preferences for urban policies by applying an integral strategy: transversality in objectives, a combination of policy instruments, and multi-level governance through the involvement of socio-economic agents and public administrations at different levels.
Furthermore, gender inequalities have been a central aspect in the EU since its foundation. To this end, it has adopted the policy frame of gender mainstreaming, which involves applying the gender approach to all sectoral policies and at all stages of each public policy, from design through to evaluation [
8,
9,
10]. The document “Incorporating equal opportunities for women and men into all community policies and activities” defines gender mainstreaming as “mobilising all general policies taking into account at the planning stage their possible effects on the respective situation of men and women” [
11]. Therefore, this also implies an integrated strategy [
12], in this case, from a gender perspective, which must be incorporated into EU initiatives, including those aimed at urban areas.
Have these two policy frames been integrated? More specifically, the question addressed in this paper concerns whether the gender mainstreaming approach has been integrated into EU-promoted integral urban development initiatives. Based on the study of legislative documentation, some analyses offer a rather negative response, concluding that there would be no gender dimension in the documents examined [
13]. Other studies on comparative case analysis concerning urban planning suggest that the gender perspective has been progressively incorporated into urban planning, generating gender-sensitive urban initiatives and policies in Europe and other regions [
14,
15]. In these studies, gender-sensitive actions mean the inclusion of measures to avoid the inequality women face and the difficulties they encounter in daily life.
In this article, we will endeavour to provide arguments and empirical evidence for these questions. To this end, we will first review the literature on gender mainstreaming in the EU and a gender perspective in urban policies to describe two approaches for analysis. Secondly, we will propose a comparative research strategy based on the analysis of local projects in line with the ‘meso-level’ approach of the EU’s urban dimension. This ‘bottom-up’ strategy will allow us to study the policy frame actually applied, rather than analysing it from the top-down based on legislative documentation or focusing on case studies, thus complementing previous analyses. The analysis of 82 projects developed within the framework of initiatives promoted by the EU in Spain between 1994 and 2013 will then be presented and discussed. The URBAN and URBANA initiatives are representative programs promoted by the Spanish Government in the framework of the European Cohesion Policy. These programmes have been developed in plans designed by local authorities to be implemented in specific urban areas (neighbourhoods). The idea of integral urban development guides them. Specifically, the attempt to overcome the vulnerability of deprived urban areas, paying attention to the multi-dimensional character of urban socio-spatial inequalities. Finally, we will set out some brief conclusions and further scope for research regarding the integration of these two policy frames in the EU and other regions. The results show that the presence of gender-oriented measures in integrated urban development projects in the period of analysis was not high. However, such projects combine measures that address inequality processes that historically affect women and measures that consider the role of men and women regarding care. These results provide opportunities for the development of defamilisation processes at the local level.
2. Gender Mainstreaming and Integral Urban Development Policy Frames
The development of policy integration strategies for urban issues is now an essential feature of urban policies, understanding that these are ‘complex problems’ requiring action from different public policy sectors and different types of actors [
4]. In particular, this is an essential aspect of the New Urban Agenda promoted by the United Nations within the framework of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) [
16]. Furthermore, gender equality is explicitly included among these goals, understanding that gender inequalities reduction must occur in an integrated way through actions in different sectors of public policy, both in general and in the case of urban policies in particular [
17,
18]. In fact, this perspective involves applying a gender mainstreaming strategy, integrating the interests of men and women into all policies and projects to achieve gender equality [
19].
In the case of the EU, both aspects are central to its policies for promoting socio-spatial cohesion within the framework of Cohesion Policy, on the one hand the integrated nature of the initiatives developed within its urban dimension [
20], and on the other the gender mainstreaming approach in all its policies, therefore including urban initiatives. Therefore, urban development initiatives and projects represent an explicit effort to integrate both policy frames of the Cohesion Policy into urban areas providing an opportunity to learn about the integration of the policy frame based on gender mainstreaming with the policy frame for integrated urban development. These initiatives would reflect the integration between two policies that, in turn, explicitly adopt integration strategies between different policy sectors [
21]. In fact, area-based initiatives, such as those promoted by the EU, constitute a relevant instrument against gender inequalities, as their integration could lead to more sustainable, more egalitarian, and more accessible contexts for all members of society [
22].
However, these policy frames set out guidelines to be incorporated into initiatives supported by the EU, but the Member States are ultimately in charge of both areas (urban policies and gender). Therefore, integrating both policy frames may also depend on the initiatives and policies that each country establishes in this regard.
In any case, to analyse integration between the two policy frames, it is necessary to define the perspective proposed by the gender mainstreaming policy frame for urban policies in general and the proposal made in this regard by the EU. This section proposes two perspectives for analysis based on a literature review of gender mainstreaming in the EU, the gender policy approach, and the gender perspective in urban planning studies.
2.1. Gender Mainstreaming I: Gender-Sensitive Policy Measures across Policy Sectors
The question of inequality between men and women has been a central issue for the European Union since its foundation. Over time, objectives have changed, new platforms and agencies have been created, and different approaches developed. Thus, from the initial formulation on discrimination prohibition and equality promotion, the EU has integrated the gender perspective in all policies and phases of the public policy cycle [
11,
23]. This approach, known as gender mainstreaming, supposes “the (re) organisation, improvement, development and evaluation of policy processes so that a gender equality perspective is incorporated in all policies at all levels and all stages, by the actors usually involved in policy-making” [
11] (p. 15). Thus, all policy sectors must incorporate gender equality among their objectives, and therefore include gender-sensitive policy measures or at least a perspective seeking to avoid the unfavourable situation of women to achieve a more egalitarian society [
24,
25].
The EU, therefore, creates a framework for the Member States to integrate gender mainstreaming into all public policies, although the latter remains within each Member’s sphere of competence. In operational terms, the European Union defines gender mainstreaming as a “strategy toward achieving gender equality. It involves the integration of a gender perspective into the preparation, design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of policies, regulatory measures and spending programmes, to promote equality between women and men, and combating discrimination” [
11,
26]. Mainstreaming thus represents a general framework for promoting equal opportunities between men and women through the entire political process and applied to all policies [
8,
27].
This approach allows and seeks to ensure the application of the gender perspective in the drafting and development of public policies promoted (co-funded) by the EU. Three main strategic objectives are established for the implementation of gender mainstreaming: (i) create or strengthen national specific governmental bodies; (ii) integrate gender perspectives into legislation, public policies, programmes and projects; (iii) generate and disseminate gender-disaggregated data and information for planning and evaluation [
28]. The second of these objectives involves action on gender inequalities in all sectoral policies promoted by the EU. Hence, the idea of mainstreaming would imply that gender inequalities represent a cross-cutting principle in all policies, and therefore that gender-sensitive policy measures (GSPMs) should be included in each policy to ensure this. Yet, the implementation of mainstreaming still seems to be limited in traditional policy sectors, such as agriculture or planning [
29,
30]
Specifically, this EU’s approach to gender mainstreaming means that it must be incorporated into the integral urban policies promoted by the EU. Therefore, in addition to the transversality of their agenda regarding different objectives and policy sectors to address the complexity of urban problems (physical space, economic, social development, etc.), these initiatives must incorporate the gender perspective transversally and, therefore, should include GSPMs in all proposed objectives. That is, urban policies should demonstrate the existence of the gender mainstreaming approach as the transversal presence of GSPMs in all their objectives.
2.2. Gender Mainstreaming II: Gender-Sensitive Policy Measures across Approaches
Thus, gender mainstreaming means transversality between different policy sectors and is considered one of the first examples of the integral strategy of public policies [
12]. However, there is widespread consensus that this perspective is built on previous strategies and policies to reduce gender inequalities. Booth and Bennet [
31] note that gender mainstreaming is based on three traditions of equality policy: the equal treatment perspective, the women’s perspective, and the gender perspective. This would entail designing gender-sensitive policy measures (GSPM) to achieve different outcomes concerning equality between women and men in all three cases.
The first tradition means actions that guarantee women the same rights and opportunities as men in the public sphere. It has been developed mainly through legally binding instruments, such as directives on equal pay and equal treatment [
8]. The second inspire initiatives that identify women as a disadvantaged group in society, requiring specific treatment and opportunities to rectify the history of discrimination they have endured as a group. It consists mainly of creating conditions for equality between men and women through positive actions [
8,
32]. Finally, the gender perspective promotes actions to transform the social organisation for a fairer distribution of responsibilities between men and women. The aim is to transform the role of men and women in society, their responsibilities in the public sphere and, in particular, in the private sphere, given the centrality of women as caregivers, to reconcile home, work, and family life [
25,
27,
31].
From all three perspectives, joint efforts should be made to achieve gender equality in all areas [
31]. Therefore, it is possible to find overlaps between them, promoting processes of complementarity and integrality. From this perspective, gender mainstreaming would not be so much about the presence of gender inequality-oriented measures in different public policy sectors, but rather about which gender perspectives or approaches are included somewhat regardless of the sectoral policy concerned. In this regard, for example, in the analysis of the new urban agenda, Moser [
19] points out that gender mainstreaming means both the integration of the gender perspective into all policies and projects to achieve equality, as well as specific activities ‘‘aimed at empowering women, to increase their bargaining power in public and private spheres to participate fully in economic and political ’life’”(p. 226).
In this regard, it is also relevant to note the importance of gender inequalities in welfare state studies, grounded in feminist criticism of the classic approach developed by Esping-Andersen [
33]. This perspective brings to light the importance of unpaid work done by women through the provision of care and the need to integrate this issue into studies on the welfare state [
34,
35,
36,
37,
38,
39]. More generally, this issue falls within the framework of the distinction between classic risks and new risks of the welfare state, including among the former, mainly, socio-labour integration, and among the latter, the need to address the provision of welfare services traditionally carried out by women within the family, and in particular, those focused on the care of dependents [
40,
41,
42]. From this perspective, the analysis focuses on the study of initiatives that tend to produce defamilisation, understood as the degree to which the state assumes welfare responsibilities traditionally developed in the households. Defamilisation would involve incorporating measures that provide households with opportunities to meet the demand for care without resorting to the self-provision that women generally carry out [
33,
43].
In this line, the literature on urban planning points out that the conformation of urban space can generate gender inequalities in everyday life because its use by women and men is different [
30,
44]. Therefore, in addition to the necessary presence of women in urban planning policies and processes, these should promote a ‘women-friendly city’ according to the challenges they face in their daily lives derived from the roles they play in both the public and private spheres [
45,
46].
This perspective, in addition to pointing out the situations of inequality faced by women in classic areas (education, employment, health, etc.), and the form these take in the urban context, focuses mainly on two major issues about how urban space, and therefore, urban planning policies generate gender inequalities. On the one hand, women’s mobility and accessibility problems arise because of their role as caregivers. Their day-to-day is more complicated than that of men. They have to make multiple trips between schools, places of work, the shops, and other spaces related to the care activities they carry out (health centres, education establishments, …), and they tend to use private transport to a lesser degree [
47,
48,
49]. From this perspective, an urban gender-sensitive policy will seek to reduce the distance between residence and places of work, schools, and public facilities to increase accessibility. These places are nodes on women’s daily circuits, especially for those with family responsibilities that impose costs on their daily lives. On the other hand, this perspective also identifies gender inequalities related to safety in the urban space. Women are recognised as a vulnerable group in this respect, regardless of whether they are more at risk or because women have a lower level of perceived safety than men in public spaces, both in urban centres and in the suburbs [
50,
51]. Measures aimed at both issues would help make cities more women-friendly and improve employment opportunities [
22,
45,
52,
53,
54].
On the whole, based on previous arguments, gender-sensitive policy measures could be understood around two main approaches. On the one hand, actions that understand gender inequalities as differences in resources and opportunities in various fields identifying women as a disadvantaged group. In this case, policy measures try to reduce such differences in key areas and aspects of the historical gap between men and women (public space, employment, education, health, etc.). This approach means urban policies should include measures aimed at reducing the classic risks faced by women: insecurity in urban areas, other initiatives aimed at improving situations of inequality and vulnerability of women, or more generally, measures to increase equality between men and women from a woman’s perspective [
8,
31].
On the other hand, some measures understand gender inequalities as the consequences of gender roles and the impact on the organisation of activities and spaces in the city. Therefore, they seek to modify such roles, or at least reduce the barriers women encounter in everyday life in the city. This approach would include measures aimed at promoting the practical interests of women [
55], acting on new social risks linked to care, reducing the costs of mobility and accessibility in everyday life to work or other activities, and in particular the development and/or reconciliation of care tasks (public transport, proximity to day-care, schools, social centres, health centres, etc.). These are, therefore, measures aimed at reducing gender inequalities from a ‘gender perspective’, with particular emphasis on defamilisation processes.
These arguments imply that integrating a gender perspective into urban policies could be studied from at least three perspectives. Firstly, the gender approach in urban initiatives means GSPMs inclusion and the importance concerning the set of measures proposed by urban policies. Secondly, in line with the more classic approach of gender mainstreaming, it would mean transversality, with GSPMs in the different sectors of public policy that include integrated urban policies. Thirdly, in line with the two broad approaches on gender-sensitive policies, integrality would involve combining GSPMs that address these two orientations (women and gender perspectives). Obviously, the first is a necessary condition for the other two.
3. Data and Methods
This article will analyse the presence, transversality, and gender perspective approach in integrated urban development programmes developed in Spain within the framework of EU initiatives, specifically the URBAN and URBANA Initiatives. The first was developed between 1994 and 2006 within the URBAN I (1994–1999) and URBAN II (2000–2006) programmes in 39 cities (29 and 10, respectively). Subsequently, between 2007 and 2013, the URBANA Initiative was implemented in 46 cities, a programme promoted by the Spanish government through ERDF funds. Within the same framework, since 2014, the Sustainable and Integrated Urban Development Strategy (SIUDS) has been implemented in 174 municipalities. Both of them are place-based programmes nested in the European Cohesion Policy aimed at promoting sociospatial cohesion. In its general framework, each country established specific objectives and implementation rules, and a local government design-specific plan established concrete objectives, governance modes, and policy actions.
Both the URBAN and the URBANA initiatives involve implementing the EU’s integral urban development strategy: cross-cutting objectives, multi-level governance, and the participation of socio-economic actors and citizens in general. More specifically, its policy frame aims to promote integral urban regeneration, revitalising neighbourhoods through the development of actions in different policy sectors aiming to reduce levels of socio-spatial vulnerability in disadvantaged urban areas [
5]. Thus, within the framework of these initiatives, actions are carried out with objectives related to different sectors of public policy, such as urban space, the promotion of economic development, the improvement of social integration, protection of the environment, and the improvement of governance [
56,
57,
58].
Since these are initiatives promoted by the EU, local projects must incorporate a gender perspective. In addition to the general principle of gender mainstreaming established by the EU, the URBAN II Initiative explicitly includes the promotion of equal opportunities for men and women, including women as a specific target in priorities related to entrepreneurship and agreements in favour of employment, as well as the development of a strategy against exclusion and discrimination especially targeted at women, immigrants, and refugees [
57]. Project strategies in the framework of URBANA Initiative must show consistency with European policies on the environment, employment promotion, and equal opportunities for men and women, taking into account EU objectives on equal opportunities. Projects should highlight how they contribute to achieving greater integration of women in the employment and social spheres, estimating the expected impact on women’s entrepreneurship, and the reconciliation of family and professional life [
58].
In this regard, it is also worth mentioning some features of equality policies implemented in Spain, both because of changes in their content and their multi-level character. These policies have been developed mainly through equal opportunities plans, promoted and drawn up by the central and regional governments in the early stages of Spain’s transition to democracy in the early 1980s. They have institutionalised public policies on equal opportunities and positive action onto the public agenda [
59,
60]. Specifically, some significant milestones have influenced equality policies in Spain, namely the Gender Violence Act (2003), the Dependency Act (2006) establishing financial aid and services for the care of dependents, and the Equality Act of 2007, which implies the explicit introduction of the principle of gender mainstreaming in all policies and at all levels of government in Spain. The evolution of the equality plans adopted by regional governments is similar. These plans have progressively incorporated actions regarding new social risks linked to care and the work/life balance together with the classic challenges (participation in the public sphere, education, employment, etc.) [
61,
62]. Although gender mainstreaming is not common in local governments [
63], they have increasingly incorporated equality agencies and plans, albeit with differences according to the role played by critical actors and women’s coalitions that promote the inclusion of gender issues in the municipal agenda [
64].
However, in this context, to what extent does gender mainstreaming take place in integral urban development initiatives promoted by the EU? To answer this question, the portfolios of local projects developed within the framework of the URBAN and URBANA Initiatives have been analysed through the application of comparative urban policy portfolio analysis (CUPPA). This approach proposes a bottom-up strategy to analyse urban policy frames based on the study of all measures included in projects developed under the same programme or public policy. In this way, the characteristics of its policy frame are reconstructed through the actions included in the local portfolios rather than relying solely on the analysis of normative or programmatic documentation or specific cases [
4,
65]. Thus, the integration between integral urban development and gender mainstreaming policy frames is studied according to the policy measures included in local projects. Therefore, from an operational point of view, the research question explored would be as follows. To what extent did the projects include gender-sensitive political measures? Moreover, what kind of projects have been included to obtain the extent of gender mainstreaming as transversality and the relevance of different gender mainstreaming approaches?
The objectives of policy measures implemented in all projects are analysed, enabling us to rebuild the substantive dimension of the policy frame developed in each programme and compare them. To this end, the design and evaluation reports of local URBAN and URBANA Initiatives have been analysed. A total of 82 projects with 1659 policy measures have been identified, constructing a data set containing all measures. For each of them, we have identified whether they are gender-sensitive political measures (GSPMs). Then, they have been analysed to study their integrality in terms of the proposal made in the previous section (
Figure 1).
As indicated above, GSPMs are policy measures that consider gender inequalities in their objectives. Two criteria have been applied to analyse local portfolios, namely whether a specific focus on women is explicitly stated, or whether this is done implicitly because of its potential effects on gender inequalities. The first criterion identifies measures targeted explicitly at women (for example, gender-based violence), or for which they are beneficiaries, even if the measures have also targeted other groups (e.g., measures to improve employability where women are a specific target among other social groups).
The second criterion identifies measures that, although not explicitly mentioning women, would have specific effects on reducing gender inequalities. On the one hand, these include measures that seek to make a city more friendly for women in their daily lives (improvements in safety in public spaces, in public transport, etc.). On the other hand, actions are aimed at improving care services for dependents, tasks generally performed by women (e.g., nursery and day-care, or other services for minors and other dependents). In Spain, as in other countries in Europe, informal care for both the elderly and children is mainly provided by women [
66,
67,
68].
The specific objectives of all the GSPMs identified with the above criteria have been classified using the two proposed perspectives. First, there is gender mainstreaming as a transversal inclusion of GSPMs in the objectives set by urban development projects. To this end, the measures have been classified in terms of the five main objectives defined by the Framework of Reference for Sustainable Urban Development in Europe, namely physical space, economic development, social integration, environmental sustainability, and governance [
69]. These are the policy sectors linked to the main objectives of this type of initiative. For instance, attract or generate economic activities and/or enhance existing ones (economic development), welfare services such as education, health, minorities, poverty (social integration), community life, associational life and promotion of public participation (governance), green spaces and better energy consumption (environmental sustainability), as well as transport, accessibility, and housing (physical space). Once the gender-sensitive measures have been identified, we searched for them in each objective to ‘count’ their presence in each objective.
The presence of GSPMs in these objectives will enable us to analyse gender transversality across policy sectors, as set out in the perspective of gender mainstreaming, in general, and the principles promoted in this regard by the EU, in particular. In addition to the distribution of GSPMs among them, the standardised Herfindahl–Hirschman Index (sHHI) will help to show whether the GSPMs are similarly distributed among the five objectives (index equal to 1) or whether they centred in one of those objectives (index equal to 0). Therefore, values closer to 1 will show a higher degree of gender mainstreaming in the policy frame of the programmes (a higher degree of transversality across its five major objectives).
Second, we have analysed gender approaches according to whether objectives are oriented towards them. Specifically, the weight of the GSPMs corresponding to a women and gender approach on the total of policy measures has been analysed. Therefore, a greater degree of integrality would be evident when the difference between the weighting of the two orientations is equal to zero. Other values will show a lower degree of integrality, showing whether it does so towards the women perspective (values less than 0) or the gender perspective (values greater than 0).
4. Results and Discussion
How many gender-sensitive policy measures do the projects include? They account for 14.2% of the 1695 measures analysed. The vast majority of these focus on the objective of social integration (83.4%), particularly measures for improving the employability of women (18.7% of the total GSPMs), and mainly those aimed at facilitating the reconciliation of care tasks (30.6%). The objectives of other urban development goals are very minority. Only 10% of gender-sensitive measures involve purposes related to improving physical space (lighting, public transport, …) (
Table 1).
A comparison with the distribution of the objectives developed by the projects shows even more clearly this inclination of gender measures toward goals related to social integration. These account for 43.6% of the total measures. Thus, the difference between the set of measures as a whole and the GSPMs is equal to 39.8 points (
Table 1). For the other objectives, on the other hand, it is negative, especially for those related to economic development (−17.0) or physical space (−15.8), the difference being somewhat smaller for those related to environmental sustainability (−5.6) and, in particular, governance (−1.4), areas for which, in general, there are few measures in analysed projects.
Thus, analysis of local portfolios shows projects include gender sensitivity policy measures, although these are mainly oriented towards social inclusion: most of the GSPMs aims to improve women’s social integration. This characteristic could be explained primarily by the policy frame of urban initiatives analysed. Although their strategy is integral, they focus on the regeneration of disadvantaged areas, social integration being one of their most relevant objectives, especially regarding women because they are targeted as a specific vulnerable group in need of social support. On the contrary, other policy sectors are more resistant to incorporating GSPMs. For instance, urban planning actions have aimed to promote changes in city organisation and its influence on women’s daily lives [
44]. According to the results presented, this pattern also appears regarding economic development policy measures, i.e., the role of women as economic agents in urban development. This bias towards social integration is also common in gender equality policy in Spain [
29,
30,
62].
This distribution, therefore, shows that the integrality of the policy frame understood as gender mainstreaming is relatively low. The value of the SHHI indicator is equal to 0.37, far from the value 1, which would show a balanced distribution of GSPMs across the five primary objectives of integrated urban development. However, analysis of the orientation of the GSPMs shows a certain balance between women and gender approaches. Of the total GSPMs, 48.9% are oriented towards the former, while 50.2% are oriented towards the latter. From this perspective, programmes point to an integrated strategy combining women and gender approaches.
In sum, although the gender approach in projects does not reflect a high presence or level of transversality, it is not negligible. There are no other similar studies to assess the relevance of the GSPMs quantitative presence in analysed projects. However, the analyses show that if gender is considered a sectorial objective, its weighting is more significant, for example, than environment or governance goals. Moreover, it is pretty close to the weighting of actions aimed at promoting economic development. Therefore, it is an objective that appears to have been incorporated into integral urban development projects.
Furthermore, although the measures are concentrated in a specific policy sector, the strategy applied combines the two identified approaches. Gender inequalities are addressed from a social vulnerability perspective and gender roles transformation (gender and women approaches, respectively). This result highlights the importance of studying the overlapping between these approaches to understand gender mainstreaming and the specific contexts in which it is implemented. As Booth and Bennet indicate, the different perspectives must operate together to achieve an effectively equal society [
31]. Therefore, although the GSPMs do not particularly stand out for their presence or transversality, some gender integrality exists in urban policy due to combining the two approaches needed to achieve more egalitarian societies.
Comparison between the URBAN and URBANA initiatives shows that the presence of GSPMs is quite similar between them, slightly higher in the first case than the second (15.2% and 12.9%, respectively). Thus, despite the growing importance of gender mainstreaming in the EU, the explicit emphasis in programmes calling for changes in Spanish equality policies does not seem to increase the presence of the gender perspective, i.e., GSPMs, in the later programme developed.
However, analysis of gender mainstreaming in terms of transversality and approaches flags some differences. In both programmes, the GSPMs focus mainly on social integration, although to a lesser extent in the URBANA Initiative. In this case, the presence of GSPMs is somewhat more significant concerning the objective of improving physical space and community governance. The difference between GSPMs distribution across the five objectives and all policy measures is 46.2 points for social integration in the URBAN Initiative and 40.3 points in the URBANA Initiative. These differences are −17.2 and −13.8 points for physical space, −15.7 and −18.7 for economic development, −3.4 and −8.7 for environmental sustainability, and finally −2.0 and 0.3 for the objective of improving community governance (
Figure 2 and
Table A2 in
Appendix A).
There are no GSPMs regarding environmental sustainability in the URBANA Initiative. However, the low weighting of these in the URBAN programme means that the former shows a slightly more cross-cutting distribution of the gender perspective, or rather, there is a lower level of concentration concerning the object of social integration. In particular, the SHHI values are equal to 0.34 in URBAN and 0.41 in the case of URBANA. Therefore, the transversality of gender measures is somewhat more significant in the programme implemented later. This could be explained by the fact that Spain, like other EU countries, is progressively implementing the principle of gender mainstreaming, incorporating gender perspectives transversally through different policy sectors [
57], and having adopted the Effective Equality Act in 2007, when the URBANA Initiative began.
Finally, analysis of gender mainstreaming approaches shows that, in general, the URBANA Initiative presents a greater balance between women and gender approaches (
Figure 3). The difference between them is −2.2 points, while in the URBAN Initiative it is equal to 4.4 points (
Table A2 in
Appendix A). Thus, the URBAN Initiative is more oriented towards classic challenges about gender inequalities, and the URBANA Initiative is more oriented towards the new risks linked to women’s roles as caregivers and their incorporation into public life, as well as the effect of urban morphology on them. As mentioned before, this programme explicitly incorporates family life balance into its goals. In addition, at that moment, the reconciliation of working and family life became a dominant issue in Spain’s equality policy [
29], and a debate took place with the subsequent implementation of the Dependency Act in 2006, aimed at promoting processes defamilisation [
70].
5. Conclusions
The analyses presented show that the integrated urban development projects implemented in Spain between 1994 and 213 within the framework of EU initiatives have incorporated, to some extent, the gender perspective. These results scope cannot be assessed more precisely, as there is, in general, not much systematic evidence on this subject to allow for comparative analysis. However, the results show that the presence of GSPMs is not negligible and is even greater than that of other central objectives of integrated urban development in general and those set by the EU in particular.
Therefore, there is some integration of the gender mainstreaming policy frame into the policy frame for integrated urban initiatives. However, the integration of the former seems to be contingent upon the latter. The focus on the revitalisation of disadvantaged neighbourhoods that characterises the two programmes analysed could explain their low level of gender mainstreaming as transversality. GSPMs focus on social integration objectives, as do the projects analysed in general. Besides, there may still be resistance to their incorporation into other objectives, such as physical space or economic development, that could contribute to more transformative changes in the roles of men and women, as some case studies show [
19,
44]. This particular bias towards social integration may be due to programme frames, which, as we said previously, present social integration as one of their most relevant objectives, and the fact that the conception of gender equality is biased towards an idea that links gender inequality with social policy.
Nevertheless, the analysis of gender approaches adopted in local projects shows that women are not only targeted as disadvantaged groups. Projects also include actions to foster gender roles changes to facilitate compatibility between public space incorporation and the traditional care role within the home. Although the difference between URBAN and URBANA initiatives is small, the gender approach seems to be expanded in the later, either because work/life balance is explicitly one of its objectives or because of equality policies trends in Spain, as well as the critical actors that drive them at the local level [
64,
71]. This outcome points to the role that integrated urban development interventions can play concerning gender inequalities in local welfare systems, not just because of their attention to the classic inequalities that women face, but particularly because of their contribution to the development of defamilisation processes. These initiatives integrate this new challenge into local government actions to reduce inequalities caused by the roles assigned to men and women in general, and specifically regarding care in the home. Just as nationwide comparative studies show the effects of defamilisation initiatives on women’s employment integration in the EU [
70,
72], integrated urban policies could complement such effects depending on the gender mainstreaming approach adopted.
As indicated before, the absence of comparative data from other urban programmes or policies does not allow for any clear conclusions on the importance of integration between the two integrated policy frames analysed (gender mainstreaming and integrated urban development). However, the strategy proposed based on the analysis of local portfolios (CUPPA) shows that, although there are not many explicit references to gender inequalities in the normative and strategic documents of EU integrated urban development initiatives, there does seem to be some integration when we analyse what is actually done and achieved by local projects with the policy measures that have been implemented. This would point towards the trend of incorporating GSPMs into urban policies shown by case studies on urban planning [
73]. The applied perspective thus implies an exercise that complements these two strategies, adding a systematic method for comparative analysis that considers both the presence of GSPMs, as well as their transversality and approach, enriching the study of the mainstreaming perspective and, more generally, gender mainstreaming in urban policies, one of the central aspects within the SDGs and the new urban agenda.