Eva Kail

Eva Kail is a Vienna-based urban planner who has popularized gender mainstreaming in city design and contributed to more than 60 projects related to gender equality in housing, transportation, planning, and design of public spaces.

Career Kail served as the head of Vienna's first women's office, the Frauenburo, which was established after a 1991 photography exhibit organized by Kail called Who Owns the Public Space. It led to broader conversations about how many European cities, including Vienna, had been designed primarily with male commuters in mind and could subsequently fail to meet women's needs; in 1992, Kail became head of the Frauenburo.

The Frauen-Werk-Stadt functioned as a proof of concept for the applications of gender mainstreaming in urban planning, and from 2002 to 2006 Kail was able to work on a pilot in the neighborhood of Mariahilf, with 28,000 residents. This work included improving street lighting, prioritizing pedestrians, installing new seating, widening pavement, and removing barriers to ease passage of strollers, wheelchair users, and the elderly.