What do a playground, a municipal office and a bus stop have in common?
The municipality. And the way it treats us.
Because a municipality is not only about decisions and council meetings. It is about whether you fit. Whether you are served. Whether you feel that the space around you belongs to you too.
Local government shapes everyday life more than we often realise. The way streets are designed, how public services operate, how workplaces function and how public spaces are organised all influence who feels included and who remains on the margins.
Across Europe, some municipalities have started asking a simple but powerful question:
Who is left out of our policies, services and public spaces?
Not all cities liked the answers they found. But some decided to act.
One of them is Nantes, in France, which has set an ambitious political goal: to become Europe’s first “non-sexist city” by 2030. Rather than treating equality as a symbolic commitment, Nantes has turned it into a cross-cutting public policy shaping how the city works every day.
The approach goes beyond statements. It includes concrete measures that affect both the workplace and the public space, such as:
- redesigning school playgrounds so that girls and boys can use them equally
- installing free menstrual product dispensers across the city to address period poverty
- running city-wide campaigns to challenge everyday sexism
- supporting victims of gender-based violence through dedicated services such as the Citad’elles centre
Within the DiGiN project, this initiative was documented as one of the project’s Inspiring Practices, highlighting how municipalities can translate equality commitments into concrete institutional change.
As part of this work, DiGiN team member Vasia Madesi conducted an interview with Mahaut Bertu, Deputy Mayor of Nantes responsible for equality, the non-sexist city initiative and anti-discrimination policy. The conversation explored how the initiative emerged, how it is implemented across municipal departments and what challenges cities face when attempting to transform public institutions.
Recently, this work reached new audiences through a podcast discussion in Greece, where the Nantes experience was presented and discussed with listeners interested in how municipalities can rethink equality in everyday governance. The conversation highlighted an important point: local innovation can travel across borders and inspire new conversations about what cities can do.
Because equality is not abstract. It is present in the places we move through every day: in schools, public spaces, services and workplaces.
This is precisely the question that the DiGiN project has been exploring together with municipalities across Europe: how to embed diversity, equity and inclusion into the everyday functioning of local government.
As the project approaches its conclusion, these conversations will continue at the DiGiN Final Conference, taking place on 25 March 2026 in Rotterdam and online, bringing together municipal staff, policymakers, practitioners and researchers to exchange lessons and tools for building inclusive municipal organisations.
Because building inclusive municipalities is not about ideology.
It is about how cities actually function for the people who live in them.
On International Women’s Day, it is worth remembering that equality is not only shaped by national policies or international frameworks. It is also built in the everyday decisions made by our cities.
And that is where change often begins.
