Gendered informality: Feminist perspectives on subaltern surveillance

This commentary explores gendered informality through adopting feminist perspectives on Bandauko's idea of subaltern surveillance. Seeing spaces and opportunities as constructed and experienced in gendered ways, I explore how subaltern surveillance might be afforded or adopted for different bodies and identities. Drawing on informality scholarship and feminist geography, the essay provides critical insights into the gendered dynamics in the practice of shadowing the state , institutional structures, and urbanism of opportunities, and begins to think about more passive practices of subaltern surveillance. I conclude with a call for greater critical engagement with feminist perspectives in informality scholarship.