Women's Professional Advancement in Urban Planning Industries: A Systematic Review of Barriers and Facilitators in the Indian Context

Globalization is expanding daily throughout the world and world has now reached globalisation 4.0, often known as the digital-driven era of globalization. In which, gender equality, on the other hand, has remained static over the decades. As per the Global statistics Times, Males account for 51.95% of the population in 2023, while females account for 48.05% of the overall population in India. The most current research studies conducted by National Sample Survey Office (NSSO)^[1] on Gender equality in labour force participation have found that gender equality is more important for the country’s economic growth. Further, it is reported that the Indian economy has seen significant changes during the last three decades and reported an average increase of 5-9%. These factors are expected to reduce the requirement for women’s household labour time while improving their chances of landing a paid employment.^[2] Additionally, the United Nations describes “fundamental economic country conditions and prospects”. In 2017, the United Nations examined the Human Development Index using three essential components of human development: living a long and healthy life, obtaining a decent education and having a job. So, India’s human development index is 0.64 compared to other emerging countries.^[3] This index could have been higher in order to improve women’s engagement in urban planning and design. As a result, raising the participation rate of women will directly increase the GDP growth of countries, whether developing or developed.^[4,5] As a result, women’s equality in emerging nations shifts the overall image toward developed countries. Additionally, most women are economically, physically, socially and morally reliant in today’s world. Even though women’s literacy and knowledge also increase, they should be able to make their own decisions, but they still require economic empowerment. Women’s financial autonomy can only come through their opportunity to work.^[6]

During India’s G20 presidency, experts from the United Nations, UN-Habitat, gender advocacy groups and the Indian government addressed the barriers that women face in achieving bureaucratic positions. These challenges encompass a range of social factors, including stereotypical attitudes, economic barriers, limited access to education and training for financial independence and institutional barriers such as the gender mainstreaming policy in urban spaces and the built environment.^[7]

According to research carried out by organizations such as the Centre for Policy Research (CPR) and the Institute of Urban Designers India (IUDI), specific statistics on the percentage of women in the urban planning and development sector in India may vary and are not consistently tracked in public reports. However, it’s widely recognized that women remain underrepresented in this field, both in India and globally.^[8,9] According to Niti Ayog statistics, the proportion of women urban planners in India is around 14%, compared to 86% for men^[10] and globally, women now hold 10% of senior architectural and urban planning posts worldwide, with this figure expected to rise to 20% by 2023.^[11] There is a still lack of strong comprehensive reports on aggregated data on the access of women to workplaces and the status of women in the profession based on which policymakers and researchers can finalize policies for Indian cities.^[12,13]

Additionally, City inclusiveness, equity and safety depend on the design of cities. So that, women participation in advancement professionals in urban planning is crucial to identify the barriers and rank them and removed by the most appropriate facilitators.^[14,15] In order to comprehend the aforementioned hypotheses, an extensive literature review is need of the hour, based on which the researcher where sensitized about the research direction on women centric urban planning and women empowerment including gender mainstreaming in the urban planning. According to the^[16] the current lack of research on women’s involvement in urban planning and design in India is a significant issue. Indian women often face religious, ethical and discriminatory barriers, contributing to this situation. It is imperative to dismantle these barriers and involve women in urban planning to establish a more equitable and safer environment for women’s freedom of movement.

This research paper aims to identify the barriers and solutions that women encounter in their progression as urban planning professionals for fair, sustainable and inclusive planning in cities and nations. The goal is to ensure that women have equal access to space and infrastructure in the built environment and public spaces by removing barriers and providing support. For that Bibliography study has been carried out considering various keywords in the Scopus database of the year 1991 to 2022. Based on those keywords, 76 articles are figure out on women in urban development and planning. To evaluate the bibliography, the RStudio version 4.1 programmer is used to create several graphical representations of published works over a decade, as well as average citations of each year. A literature review is also used to determine the 15 facilitators for breaking the 28 barriers to urban planning. According to the findings of this study, women make up a modest proportion of decision-making positions in the urban planning industry. The explanation discovered by the literature study is, women encounter many problems when they enter the workplace, such as family and caregiving responsibilities, under-representation of women in the planning field, digital literacy and many other barriers. Gender mainstreaming policies and empowerment methods must be implemented consequently to attract more women into urban planning sector. Consequently, the issue cannot be solved without first identifying and ranking the barriers to the nation’s progress, that’s wise this research paper spark more attention towards the women progression in urban planning and urban development.^[17]

Through this research spared more awareness towards the women participation and issues are highlighted which make cities safer for women by giving them equal access to decision-making possibilities and implementing laws that make it easier for them to move around in daylight and darkness. The in-depth literature review has been offered in this work to help readers grasp the issues and will pave a path to conduct research in the field of women’s professional advancement in urban planning.

The anticipated Labour Force Participation Rate (LFPR) on typical status for women aged 15 and older in the country was 30.0%, 32.5% and 32.8% in 2019-20, 2020-21 and 2021-22, respectively, showing a rising trend.^[18] Contradictory women safety and securities in cities and working places showing worse trend day by day. Despite the different policies enacted by the government and organizations, 10 out of every 6 women encounter sexual harassment and discrimination in cities and workplaces.^[19,20] The reasons for this unfavourable trend are that women’s involvement in STREM jobs and decision-making positions is lower than in other industries.^[21] Factors all contribute to low participation are the stereotype based on sex gender, a lack of role models, stressors related to family responsibility, childbirth, physical safety at work and others.^[22] The fundamental issue for everyone is addressing gender disparities in India. Participation, empowerment and sustainability indicate interdependence, indicating that these three components are essential aspects of a whole entity,^[23] suggest that the inclusion of a broad spectrum of community people in the hiring process plays a significant role in creating sustainability.

India’s inclusion of “women-led development” as a key priority during its G20 presidency, alongside other objectives such as inclusive growth, progress on Sustainable Development Goals, green development, technological transformation and reforming multilateral institutions, can be interpreted as an implicit recognition of the significant policy challenge posed by gender equality in India.^[24,25] The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) “aim to accomplish all people’s human rights and gender equality and empower all women and girls.” Some Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are especially important for attaining economic empowerment for women and gender equality in employment;^[26]

SDG 4: On ensuring fair and equitable quality education and fostering opportunities for lifelong learning for everyone.

SDG 5: On Succeeding Gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls.

SDG 8: On encouraging inclusive, long-term economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for everyone.

SDG 10: Reducing inequality within the organization and country.

SDG 11: Make City and Human Settlements inclusive and safe, resilient and Sustainable.

The five Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) along with other SDGs are essential for making cities better, more resilient to climate change and liveable for all residents. Women’s natural tendency to provide care may be contributing to the SDGs’ realisation. In addition, there is a lack of infrastructure in the cities that is focused on women and children. Without women’s participation in advancement professionals in urban planning, it would be difficult to solve all the issues that women and other minority face in the cities and nation at all levels of development. Urban planning practices nowadays disregard the needs of women. However, inadequate urban design can negatively impact women’s income, mobility and safety. The situation may be improvised if there are women on the planning team.

Globally, gender gap score in 2022 is 68.1%, indicating a 31.9% remaining deficit to close. Only five of the 153 countries raised their score by at least 4.4%. As a result, the gap has narrowed by 0.24% points on average during the last 15 years. The worldwide gender gap will be filled in 135.6 years if progress toward gender parity continues at the same rate as indicated between the 2006 and 2021 editions. Since 2006, the Score for economic participation and opportunity has increased by only 2.4% points, so around a 0.16% increase by the year 2021. As a result, bridging this gap will take another 267.6 years at the global level.^[27] World employment and social outlook report stated that, globally, women’s labour-force participation percentage was 47.4% in 2022, compared to 72.3% for males. The 24.9% point difference implies that there are two such women for every monetarily inactive male.^[28] The report (ILO) states that global employment growth will be 1.0% in 2023, less than half the level in 2022, while global unemployment will rise slightly to 5.8%, reversal of the decline in the 2020-2022.^[29]

Women confront lower earning chances than males across the world. Women are less likely to work for a living or actively pursue employment. Women make up slightly more than half of the worldwide labor force, while males make up 80%. Women are less likely to work in formal jobs and have less prospects for business growth or career advancement.^[30] As per the gender data portal, In South Asia and the Middle East and North Africa, males participate three times more than women. Furthermore, the gender divide is smallest in Latin America and the Caribbean. In lower-middle-income nations, the gender participation gap is highest. Mercer’s 2020 Survey,^[31] over 1,100 firms worldwide discovered a leaky pipeline for women in leadership, with women’s representation declining as levels progress. Such as, 23% women are in executive positions, 29% are at the senior level, manager level women are 37% and professional and support workers are 42% and 47%, respectively.

In Indian context, Gender equality report stated that,^[27] India ranks 140^th out of 156 nations in the equality gap. Furthermore, economic engagement and possibilities rank 151 out of 156 countries. Additionally, the labour force participation rate is just 22.3%, compared to 79.6% for men. In addition, the percentages of legislators, senior officers and managers and professional and technical employees are 14.6 and 29.2, respectively, compared to 85.4 and 70.9% for men.

Further many studies in India, lacks the statistics regarding female participation in the industries including urban planning profession. Furthermore, many research papers lack a legal source to justify the statistics they utilize in their publications. Additionally, women make up the smallest percentage of the workforce than in other developing nations. As a result, fluctuations in the country’s growth rate can happen in the nation. The government mandated that the GDP growth rate in each sector has slowed from 2012-2013 to 2020-2021. It is projected that it would rise by 6.0% points in the fiscal year 2022-2023, according to the Ministry of Finance, Government of India.^[32] This decreasing growth directly influences the country’s overall growth and development. In India, the service industry is critical to improving the national economy and the growth of cities.

According to the Ministry of Women and Child Development report,^[33] the involvement of women in decision-making authority in all sectors and government bodies created a strong bridge for the national economy rate and the growth of bodies. According to the research, women have a 33-percentage reservation in India, whereas many states have a 50-percentage reservation also. Despite this, female participation in several sectors remains minimal because women address the most unfavourable stereotypes in the workplace, decision-making processes and participation.^[34] To elaborate, gender-based monitoring organisations are not used to uncover correct facts and data that will aid in the construction of cities and the nation for future projects.

India’s workforce in urban planning is confronted with significant challenges. Although urbanization is a major force behind economic expansion, the nation is currently experiencing a scarcity of trained urban planners. India requires about 12,000 urban planners, yet there are only 3,945 sanctioned positions available at present. Remarkably, 42% of these jobs are still vacant. A report recommends sanctioning an extra 8,268 postings as lateral entry positions for a duration of three to five years in order to close this gap. The goal should be to raise the quantity of urban planners while simultaneously raising the standard of planning. High-powered Expert Committee (HPEC), Town and Country Planner Organization (TCPO), India Urban Data Exchange (IUDE), the Artificial Intelligence Strategy for Urban India (AISUI) and Smart City Standards, this all the Indian institute and organization working on the issues and reforms pertaining to the town planning profession and provide cutting-edge training in contemporary issues to the next generation of urban planners, as well as to reinforce and reinvigorate existing urban planning institutions and to educate officials about urban planning. The country will need 300,000 urban planners by 2023. Every year, 1,800 urban planning graduates pass out from 49 institutes, including the school of planning and Architecture Bhopal, New Delhi and Vijayawada. The number of seats has to be scaled up considerably to fill this demand-supply gap. Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, while presenting the Union Budget 2022-23, stressed the importance of urban planning. The minister also announced the government’s decision to set up a high-level panel of urban planners. The Institute of Town Planners of India (ITPI), founded in 1951, is the country’s central body for planners. As per the ITPI, the country needs many more planners than those who graduate from planning to meet its development demands. Besides that, focusing on employment in urban planning, planners, especially women, quickly obtain careers in the planning industry. However, there are questions and concerns about women in decision-making roles in planning practice and research which are unanswered.^[10,35]

With the intention of enhancing women’s employment participation, boosting social protection, enhancing women’s health and enhancing security, the Indian government introduced a national plan for women in 2016. Nonetheless, women still encounter difficulties in fields where males predominate. However, enacting legislation alone is insufficient. It is necessary to modify the way society views women and to change men’s and boys’ conduct as well as family and women’s corporations. enhancing data on women’s involvement in a variety of fields, such as environmental services that are women-centric and women-friendly. Then and only then can we go forward with giving men and women equal rights and provisions.

According to the Women-Led Development Report, out of the 432 million working-age women in India, 343 million are in the unorganized employment sector. This sector lacks official recognition, consistent employment conditions and government regulations. In Indian cities, over 10 million street vendors operate, with over 50% being women. But, in term of continuing participation in various professions especially in advancement professionals and decision level in urban planning women are less likely to man. The reasons women are less involved is the underrepresentation of women in urban governance and policy maker due to lack of accessibility and lack of physical infrastructure provide in cities and workplace.^[36]

Finally, Dr. Mansee Bal Bhargava, National President of the Women’s Indian Chamber of Commerce Industry (WICCI), stated on their blog, Planning is multi-inter-trans-disciplinary in both academia and research, but the concern for researchers is that it still needs that discipline to be more gender inclusive not just in jobs but also in choices that are made for cities and inhabitants. Still, Gender inclusion is a significant concern in areas such as transportation, public places safety.^[37]

A study is carried out to examine the research gap regarding the number of articles published on women advancement professionals in urban planning. So, firstly search for secondary source on topic of women participation from the publications in relevant journals, book chapters, expert talk articles and international statics reports. Then, the publications were then identified using databases platform such as Scopus, Web of Science, Google Schoolers and the websites of international and national government organisations. Using that database, keywords are search in term of “women’s workplace employment”, “women in urban development and bodies”, “women in urban planning and decision making” and “women empowerment”, which was then filtered by the years 1991-2021 and the relatable articles were searched. A total of 2134 search results were obtained for the relevant areas, journals and periods as results of comprehensive studies worldwide. Out of these totals, there were 122 review articles and 2012 research papers published in secondary sources.

Furthermore, 122 research publications were found, primarily based on the barriers and facilitators of women’s participation in decision-making in urban development.^[38–41] The research papers highlighting the various topics such as, Policy and structure for gender.^[41,42] gender and Sustainability, gender equality in administration and public workplace^[43] and many more are filtered. The same is further filtered by the subject area “urban planning” and there is total 76 articles are finalised used for the Bibliometric analysis.

Scientific publications indexed Scopus database engines are used to conduct a literature search utilizing shortened keywords in urban planning from 1991 to 2021. The first world employs impediments to “women’s,” “employment,” “women in the workforce,” and the second is “women participation in urban planning. Each paper was identified after using several criteria: title, authors’ names and institutional affiliations, country of origin, journal title and year of publication, a form of publishing and some citations. As a result, 326 papers were discovered, with 76 related to the search topic. Then, 76 review papers are shortlisted based on the articles published from 1991 to 2021 to narrow down the subject related to the women in urban planning and development, issues, problems and challenges faced in advancing the urban planning and development field. The Data was analysed using RStudio v.4.1.2 Software and the bibliometric parameters were studied.

According to the findings of this study, on annual scientific production in last three decades which are depicted in Figure 1, yearly articles on the problem of women’s engagement in urban workplaces, notably at the decision-making level in the planning sector, have changed from 1991 to 2021. It can be observed that when the United Nations issued a policy for women who work at a higher level in the workplace, the number of articles increased.

Figure 1:
Annual scientific production from the year 1991 to 2021.

However, the yearly percentage climb rate from Figure 2 indicated a positive trend of roughly 6.37%. In the recent two decades, the average total citation has likely increased. According to the statistics, the highest citation score is nine as seen in Figure 2 and the lowest citation score is zero in the year 1991.

Figure 2:
Average article citation from the year 1991 to 2021.

RStudio is used to determine which countries or territories have the most publications on search terms. Figure 3 shows that the United States has the most documents disclosed by a nation, with around 21 papers, followed by an undefined country with ten articles. Notably, throughout the previous 3 decades, just five papers have been published in India. As a result, in India, there is a void in the publication of papers on women and urban development.

Figure 3:
Analysis of the documents presented by nation or area.

Figure 4 illustrates a tree chart representing the keywords used by authors in their papers. The most common keywords are gender used in seven articles and women used in five articles and followed keywords are participation and urban planning. To deep observation when urban planning that takes gender into account must consider all sexes, including the LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) community as well as men, women, children and girls. And regarding urban planning, women professionals refer to women’s participation and representation in field of planning and urban development. Based on this search term map, it is notice that, only 10 and 8% of the author use the keywords on women or women involvement in urban development. So, this bibliometric analysis from tree map gives a clear idea that women advanced professional participation in urban planning in India has not studies so far.

Figure 4:
Tree map of keywords.

Furthermore, the most appropriate sources or journals for the supplied keywords were determined. As shown in Figure 5, Gender work and organization, journal of interpersonal violence, gender place and culture, equality diversity and inclusion and urban studies are the most relevant sources particularly 47 papers are applicable from the search terms.

Figure 5:
Relevant sources from several documents.

As seen in Figure , women’s engagement and gender representation in urban planning and designing-related journals are significantly lower than in other sources and, no other literature papers have been published on the topic of women in urban planning.

According to Scopus database research, 68 of the 76 publications on gender and women’s progression in urban development were written by women. Of these authors, 38% were first authors and 26% were second or third authors. It is worth noting that only 12 female authors investigated women and urban planning in various contexts across the 68 review papers. However, while there were only a few articles focusing on women’s issues in urban planning and development including industry as job opportunity. Nonetheless have done addressed the barriers on women professional advancement in urban planning and offered solutions for women with the help of expert committee of urban planning and development sectors. This research significantly contributes to enhancing our understanding of women’s issues and promoting the development of equitable, women-centric cities and organizations.

Consequently, the bibliographic analysis reveals a significant limitation in the existing research literature, particularly in relation to the identification of women who encounter difficulties in the fields of built environment and urban planning. This restricted research gap poses a challenge for researchers seeking to address this issue. Consequently, there is a growing demand for scholarly journals to expand their research scope to encompass women’s involvement in urban planning and development.

Women’s participation in various sectors is a significant issue globally and in India. According to Sima Bahous, UN women Executive Director, many nations worldwide still have legislation that openly discriminates against women. This is because males have generally formed laws without considering the viewpoints and priorities of women and girls.^[44] As a result, women-related barriers and issues are not solved until now; the visible or invisible women’s participation rate at the senior level and decision-making process is less than that of men. This is because women faced many hindrances to participating in different organizations and the workforce, either government or private sectors. Consequently, literature review has been carried out to acquire more information on specific impediments and problems that women confront throughout their professional careers. However, no study on this topic has been undertaken so far. Table 1 contains a list of obstacles and sub-barriers, as well as the beneficial influence of their study, tools and approaches employed by different researchers. Because of this data, researchers may identify the research gap on women’s impediments to participation and advancement in Indian urban planning and development.

As Shown in Table 1, likewise 76 published articles are examined and identify the various barriers for women participation and involvement in urban development. According to the articles, there are a total of 40 barriers that women face when working in organisations. Many of the terms used in the 40 barriers are similar and have overlapping scopes. To address this, a final list of 28 barriers was listed based on conversations with field specialists and modified them on context of urban planning and urban development. That is reported in Table 2.

Table 2 presents the final barriers that influence women’s involvement and progress in the Indian urban planning sector and explanation for the same is reported as below.

Gender stereotypes in the built environment, discrimination and glass-ceiling are societal mind-set barriers in which society considers that women are unsuited for the people they work with. Also, there is still an absence of women-centric infrastructure and women-friendly planning. People are treated differently just because they are men and women rather than based on their aptitude, skills and capability. Furthermore, women may feel like they are fighting against a glass ceiling in a male-dominated environment and designing.

Sexual harassment, workplace violence, societal judgment and family responsibility toward the elderly and children all fall under social obstacles. Women are more vulnerable to workplace abuse and harassment by their co-workers, bosses, or other individuals. That sensible woman do not feel comfortable at work. Furthermore, it might be challenging for women to balance their job and social lives. It is often impossible for her to fulfil her commitment to offering a 100% to their task.

Financial inequality and mobility imply that many encounter transfer issues and transfer from one location to another and a lack of assistance from higher-level persons for their career opportunities. These are the economic difficulties that women confront in their careers while working.

Digital Information technology is the most significant barrier for certain women because they have not been adequately educated from childhood. They are not aware of the technical understanding of new applications such as ArcGIS, AutoCAD, etc.

Furthermore, some workplaces/companies may not have much money or funds to invest in staff training. As a result, more women employees have not gained their talents and have not achieved a greater understanding of the company’s shares. Most women do not have sufficient digital media facilities and some women do not have the type of information they get for employment in their field. As a result, women cannot achieve their goals and do not receive any jobs related to their ambition.

Additionally, government and policy issues are major concerns today, particularly in India. Indeed, a proper gender database connected to employment, how many women are in decision-making positions in various fields and a diversity inclusion strategy for higher employment careers. One of the most serious issues in India and throughout the world is the lack of a structural policy allowing women to take maternity leave or work flexible hours in specified circumstances. That wise many women will not work. And somehow, women face personal barriers like the inability to communicate and self-confidence issues; for these reasons, women do not enter the workforce.

Facilitators to overcome the barriers to women’s involvement and progress in the Indian urban planning sector.

The listing and prioritizing of the barriers will not solve the problem. The barriers have to be removed by the appropriate solution approaches or facilitators.^[17] Hence next task is to identify the facilitators which overcome the listed 28 barriers to professional advancement of women in urban planning, through qualitative study. Based on 30 literature studies a total of 15 facilitators have been identified and reported in Table 3.

For the reader’s convenience, a quick explanation of the mentioned 15 facilitators is provided below.

Governments have implemented a variety of initiatives, including as legislation and regulations, to reduce sexual harassment and violence against women in the workplace and in public areas. However, in the absence of knowledge, it has no influence on society; thus, audience-specific programmes for awareness and supportive social and organisational environments will be developed. Also the facilitator like, to create a structural and action plan to address gender equality in the workplace and organization must have some systematic strategy, policy, or structure for women in the working in the organisation.^[54] More facilitators, for example, an online or offline training platform that offers knowledge and information about organizational operations and skill training to increase leadership quality to lead a significant number of employees are helpful to reduce the barriers related to absence of technical knowhow and digital gap.^[51,74]

To improve organisational and policy barriers the government will need to establish agencies or organizations to collect data including the previous four to five decades in various disciplines and provides a single statistics database online for researchers who want to access their research, such as International Labour Organization (ILO). However, India has no database agencies to create many statistics to determine the gap between the numbers of women participating in various sectors. Women’s need the overcome the barriers in the technological and digital area improve through skill and digital training for women.

Furthermore, maternity leave is essential for women who work in higher positions and the urban planning industry since planning is an area of knowledge and application where new generations enhance the process and techniques of developing cities every year and month. As a result, every year in planning is a fresh learning experience. However, women have families and they require a break while caring for their new bone baby. In these cases, maternity leave provides a solution.^[50],[83] Many private organisations in India still do not offer maternity leave or flexible hour policies, allowing women to continue working during their pregnancy. Finally, in order to overcome these many barriers, it is important to educate people and develop the built environment in all areas, which is one approach to increasing women’s participation in the field of urban planning. Furthermore, more women in decision-making positions will result in more inclusive, sustainable and equitable planning and cities.

The Finding of this research shows that the participation of Women in decision-making level and executive planning levels would have an impact on urban renewal programs. The reason is women are the pillar of the house and, she is the caregiver. To added interest, as stated in the introduction, women will rule half of the nation in India, roughly 48.50% in 2023, while employment in urban planning will be low, ranging from 13% to 16% as per the Times of India. However, at the highest levels, women’s involvement is too low.

This study aims to identify barriers and provide solutions for the establishment of a comprehensive database that may facilitate in-depth research on inclusive planning, sustainable planning and the creation of a built environment that caters to the needs of women in urban areas. So, at the end, this article imperative for researchers to give precedence to the identification and ranking of the 28 barriers using various tools and methodologies. For instance, employing Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) approaches can aid in determining the most significant barriers encountered by women in developing countries, such as India. This study sheds light on the topic of boosting women’s representation in professional progression within the field of urban planning, providing valuable insights for academics, policymakers and professionals for future research.

Finally, when it comes to urban planning and women’s empowerment, it was discovered that there is a significant gap between actual physical data and digital data. In the absence of these data, researchers are unable to conduct this kind of research. Following the G20 presidency, the government launched measures to address the problem of women’s participation in urban planning. In conjunction with foreign groups, several initiatives have been established. However, it is not possible to adequately address the challenges experienced by women in this profession without performing detailed ground surveys by conducting questionnaire interview in several cities across India, which can be further taken up by researcher. The study can also be conducted by the researchers to understand the role of women as decision makers and how women-centric infrastructures are provided in cities by conducting research on “examining how these barriers can be managed and overcome by various countries and cities where women professionals lead urban planning departments.”

The study examines the comprehensive literature and recent governmental initiatives aimed at promoting barrier-free and inclusive city planning for women. However, it is evident that there are still significant gaps in addressing the obstacles faced by women in the field of urban planning. To address obstacles, this study identified a total of 28 barriers and subsequently indicated a research need based on published article in past three decades from 1991 to 2021, Out of 326, 76 review papers which only addressing the relevance of the study are shortlisted for the study, which focus the topic related to barriers and challenges for the women in urban planning field.

The highlighted barriers include the experience of discrimination in crucial choices related to city planning, practice and design, as well as biased statements against women and instances of sexual harassment, both in physical and verbal forms, within the built environment and the field of planning. In addition, women have a greater burden of responsibilities related to home management, childcare, eldercare and navigating social and cultural obstacles. They also face challenges stemming from digital and technological barriers, as well as professional barriers such as limited access to training and investment strategies, among others.

Also, other barriers that women face various workplace problems that males do not, such as personal or cultural psychological constraints and economic and professional barriers. Consider the future; working women’s population in India will continue to grow. Thus, cities will require additional legislation and policies to support working women. Furthermore, more balancing policies will assist women in creating a balance between their personal and professional lives. Another barrier was found in this study is that, to create organizations and knowledge providing agencies since India does not have any structure or organization through which individuals may learn about soft skills and computer-assisted courses in urban planning. Since so much software’s are employed in urban planning field. With this technology and software, the planner’s job becomes faster than others; nonetheless, some women face such problems that they have lack confidence and do not enter this sector. Furthermore, to reduce governmental barriers, the government should build a solid database and a short-term training course for women who lack clarity in the sector and monitor regulations to help them through their experiences.

To address the mitigation of 28 identified barriers, 15 potential solutions have been proposed. These solutions include the development of a gender-sensitive analysis, the establishment of a framework and action plan, the provision of a safe and secure environment, the implementation of peace-making initiatives and the formulation of policies promoting work-life balance. Additionally, there are 11 other solutions that have been suggested to address the barriers.

To conclude that, this research article addresses the research gap to eliminate stereotypes, discrimination and sexual harassment in urban area and workplaces. Only until these barriers are overcome will women’s participation in progressing professions increase. Furthermore, there is no one article in which all barriers and solutions are described in one paper and made available to researchers; it has not yet been carried out. As a result, this research will provide researchers with ideas for overcoming the challenges that women confront in urban planning sectors at the professional level.

All authors contributed equally to the study bibliometrics data, literature study and material preparation, data collection and analysis. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.