Despite one of governance theory’s strengths being that it recognizes that processes of governing take place in sites beyond the domain of institutional politics, there has been a lack of gender analyses of governance. This is somewhat surprising given its potential to connect with feminist critique of, for example, the public - private dichotomy. Women and men use and experience the city differently and have, for example, different priorities in terms of services and infrastructure. These differences are socially constructed reflecting that the lives of women and men are deeply and systematically conditioned by various social norms and expectations. This paper aims to contribute to the gendering of governance theory by exploring how women’s insecurity in urban areas affects their use of, access to and participation in the city and the consequences for their citizenship. The focus is on how women’s insecurity in urban areas highlights the need for more gender-sensitive urban governance. Drawing on theories relating to the embodied nature of citizenship, focus group interviews with different groups of women (reflecting age, class and ethnicity) gathered in four Swedish municipalities are analyzed and the implications for gender-sensitive governance are considered.