Responding with Care Women Community Leaders' Care Practices in Gang-Controlled Neighbourhoods in Medellín, Colombia

Abstract

How do women live in violent urban neighbourhoods? Recent studies have shown that women have a capacity for action in urban neighbourhoods characterized by violence due to the presence and activities of criminal groups (Hume, 2009; Tickner et al., 2020; Wilding, 2010). This article contributes to this ongoing discussion by examining women community leaders' work in low-income, gang-controlled urban neighbourhoods in Medellín, Colombia. The article shows that women community leaders' work is based on care practices, understood as activities to improve the quality of life and live 'the best way possible' (Tronto 1993, p. 101) in the neighbourhood. Women community leaders' care practices, I argue, in fluence the access and/or use of the built environment in violent urban neighbourhoods. Their practices transform socio-spatial relations and establish an alternative way of navigating the built environment of their neighbourhoods.