The fifth wave of feminism is here!

The fifth wave of feminism I am calling for is a feminist urban revolution.

The fifth wave of feminism I am calling for is a feminist urban revolution. Unlike the fourth wave, which thrived on digital activism, online debates, and hashtag campaigns, this wave is embodied, spatial, and tangible. We are tired of feminism being abstracted into discourse and clicks. We want it to exist in the streets, in parks, in transit systems, and in the very layout of our cities.

This wave demands that gender justice be inscribed into urban design: the width of sidewalks, the placement of lights, the safety of underpasses, and the accessibility of public transport. It is a feminism that moves through the city, claims space, and makes visible what has been hidden, from unsafe alleys to invisible barriers that restrict women’s and marginalized communities’ mobility.

At The Gendered City, I, Nourhan Bassam, have been calling for what I define as the fifth wave of feminism, a wave that moves beyond institutional spaces and digital activism to reclaim the streets themselves. This wave is not just symbolic; it is embodied, spatial, and urgent. It insists that women, marginalized groups, and all underrepresented communities walk freely, linger safely, and occupy urban spaces with dignity, day and night.

The fifth wave challenges urban design blueprints and planning assumptions that have long prioritized efficiency, commerce, and male-dominated forms of mobility. It questions: whose needs are encoded in street widths, lighting plans, park layouts, and transit networks? How do zoning regulations, public seating, and hidden alleys produce fear, exclusion, or invisibility?

This wave is performative and participatory. Through feminist night walks, street mapping, and participatory audits, we gather data that exposes spatial inequities. But it is also about agency: teaching communities to read, critique, and transform the built environment. By walking, by mapping, by claiming the night, women and marginalized groups assert their presence and challenge the patriarchal scripts embedded in our cities.

The fifth wave represents a call to reframe urban feminism as a structural agenda: embedding gender and intersectional equity into the core of city planning and governance. It demands that streets and public spaces be recognized not as neutral infrastructures but as contested commons where power, inclusion, and exclusion are negotiated. This wave emphasizes the transformation of urbanism from abstract design logics into embodied, lived realities, ensuring that freedom of movement, safety, and the right to linger in public space are universal rights rather than privileges across both day and night.