gender in transport

Gender in the balance: the win-win of designing innovations for all

International Transport Forum All Transport, gender ,

This UN International Day of Women and Girls in Science, Magdalena Olczak-Rancitelli encourages us to seize the opportunity for more inclusive transport policies in the wake of the Covid pandemic

Increasing numbers of people cycling and walking has been one of the few pieces of good news to come out of the Covid crisis. But what if you live in a society where girls are not even allowed to learn to ride a bike? What if you’re afraid to walk to home from work at night? The pandemic has revealed many long-standing problems and highlighted many urgent issues for women and girls as transport users, and as employees in the transport sector. But there is hope: these issues can be addressed using the many tools at our disposal, from technological innovations to better government policy.

If we want to change behaviours, attitudes and capacities, the best place to start is by listening to the experiences and proposals of those most directly concerned. The third edition of the ITF Compendium on Transport Innovation for Sustainable Development: A Gender Perspective does just that. The publication presents a wealth of ideas from women on how to make transport more inclusive and sustainable.

The wide-ranging contributions share a common starting point: transport is not gender neutral. Women prefer flexible modes that facilitate trip chaining more than men, for example. And since women do most of the unpaid care work that many families depend on, they travel more with children and other dependents – the “mobility of care”. Anyone who has struggled to get small children and related paraphernalia up public transport stairs or onto a bus will be painfully aware that these needs are usually not accommodated in the design of transport infrastructure, services or vehicles.

Women also feel less safe and secure in public spaces, which deters them from choosing public transport, taxis, shared mobility, or from cycling and walking. Ultimately, this limits women’s and girls’ access to schools, jobs, health and other public services. The digital gender gap further hampers women’s access to online mobility services.

Even if the observational evidence is there for all to see, well-designed policies reply on good data. Gendered analysis helps assess whether specific gender needs are met properly and what the impact of innovation could be on mobility. Understanding what women want from cities, and how this translates into a vision for urban transport, should be at the heart of urban public policy. This, however, will require much finer and more differentiated knowledge of travel behaviour and users’ needs than has been the case until now. New data sources can help develop that knowledge base, but it is important to avoid biases that have become ingrained in past transport policy making. Public-private co-operation to collect, share and process gendered data is a solution, not least as a way to benefit from the wealth of mobility data created during the Covid 19 pandemic through track and trace apps.

Technology and planning alone will not suffice to improve our transport systems. Access to and affordability of transport often depends on education and income. Digital competence now also determines access to new mobility solutions, as well as the need to own a smartphone. Universal access to innovative transport services can only be achieved when these aspects are placed squarely at the centre of governance framework design.

Ride hailing is a good example. Few industries have been so greatly impacted by the pandemic, but the form of impact has varied enormously. In some markets, passenger trips have stopped, while in others there has been a sudden surge in demand as wary riders shift away from public transport. Focusing on women would not only be morally justifiable: it would enable a resilient recovery for the sector. Post-Covid recovery plans that are attentive to the concerns and needs of women will lead to an increase in female customers.

The experiences of women working in the transport sector been highlighted, and changed, by the pandemic. Customer-facing staff have seen their role expanded from ticket sales and information to policing social distancing and mask wearing regulations. Often their jobs are more dangerous where public co-operation is lacking. Transport staff, of course, risk greater exposure to the virus, as born out by infection and death rate data.

Women are often hailed as front-line “heroes” of the pandemic. The increased automation of ticketing, cleaning and other activities in response to the virus is more likely to threaten their jobs, however. Women must be given access to the training and skills development needed to benefit from the employment opportunities led by innovation. Some of the most innovative sectors – like remotely piloted aircraft systems (drones) – have pronounced gender disparities. The industry as a whole reflects the existing gender inequalities in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). Governance, nomenclature, and education must be combined in our approach to right this injustice.

Good governance is essential to point technological innovation towards equity and sustainability. But we need to rethink governance itself to follow rapid innovation and increased complexities. Exchange of good practices and ideas among all stakeholders – policymakers, business, civil society and academia – is essential to any good governance framework. The ITF Annual Consultation on gender provides a unique platform to advance dialogue on gender issues in transport and to facilitate knowledge exchange.

Our latest Compendium on Transport Innovation will inspire the discussions at this year’s consultation on 11 February 2021. But the discussions won’t stop there, and will continue in the lead-up to and during the 2021 ITF Annual Summit on Transport Innovation for Sustainable Development: Reshaping Mobility in the Wake of Covid-19.

2021 ITF Compendium on Transport Innovation for Sustainable Development: A Gender Perspective

Magdalena Olczak-Rancitelli is a Manager for Summit Preparation at the International Transport Forum

 

Put Women In The Driver’s Seat

International Transport Forum Uncategorized , , ,

If you are looking for a user-friendly, safe and accessible mobility system, involve female transport users and workers.

By Emma Latham-Jones

Every step made to improve the experience of women in transport is a win for everyone. When policy makers address gender issues in transport, they increase accessibility for all. What this means is taking a user-centric approach: every single transport user is the focus. We need to rethink transport policies that are biased against certain users, especially vulnerable citizens: children, pregnant women, disabled people, those from poorer backgrounds – they all need to be at the heart of transport policy decision making.

To do that, it is important to look at the data. The evidence should inform transport policies to ensure they reflect real-life situations and solve real-world problems. Rich evidence shows that gender is a significant determinant for the choice of transport modes. Women’s travel habits tend to be more multifaceted than those of men: they tend to take more frequent, mostly short trips; they use different services than men, and at different times of the day.

Women’s trips also more often involve children. To make transport inclusive, we cannot only serve those who make few, direct trips at set times and normally alone. Transport needs to work for everyone. When it does, it has an incredible ability to empower citizens.

Female leadership

Here at the International Transport Forum, we celebrate women who work across the sector and work to amplify women’s voices and visions for improved transport for all. The ITF appreciates the importance of diversity for the quality and value of our transport systems, and we know that women can be powerful agents of change. That is why we have a broad  range of work on Gender in Transport: from consultations on (and with) women in transport, via conferences on how to attract more females to the transport sector, to reports on how to ‘Plan and Design Transport Systems That Will Ensure Safe Travel for Women’.

Female leadership is of critical importance to increase representation of women in the transport sector. At the ITF, we are proud that three members of our staff – Mary Crass, Sharon Masterson and Magdalena Olczak-Rancitelli – have been honoured as “Remarkable Women in Transport” by the Transformative Urban Mobility Initative (TUMI); testament to our commitment advance the mainstreaming of gender perspectives in transport, together with our partners in governments, international organisations, academia and the private sector.

“The transport sector needs more gender diversity”, say argues Magdalena Olczak-Rancitelli, who is Manager of Summit Preparation at the ITF. “One of the most effective way to motivate women to make themselves heard and felt in transport is to tell stories about inspiring women who thrive in the sector.”

Outstanding female researchers

Women already achieve great things on the frontlines of transport, as bus drivers, aircraft pilots, logistics planners, and so on. But they play an equally as important role as researchers, academics and thinkers. When French transport scientist Anne de Bortoli won the ITF’s Young Researcher of the Year Award 2020, with a groundbreaking study on the environmental impact of shared e-scooters in cities, she was only the latest female success story in a long history of female excellence in transport research.

2013 Young Researcher of the Year, Laura Schewel from the United States, won the Award with a fascinating analysis of the history and policies of moving retail goods. Today, Laura is the CEO of Streetlight Data, a start-up that provides transport and urban planners the with an easy and affordable way to incorporate data on mobility behaviour into important decisions – for instance how citizens are using roads, bike lanes and sidewalks. Last year, Schewel’s company created the first ever bike and pedestrian metrics for the urban transport industry. The MIT Technology Review named her one of its “35 Innovators Under 35” in 2013.

Laura Schewel receiving the Young Researcher of the Year Award at the ITF Summit of Transport Ministers in Leipzig, Germany, in May 2013

Women researchers are also making major contributions to better understanding the link between transport and climate change. In 2015, Dr Nihan Akyelken from Turkey won the ITF Young Researcher of the Year Award for developing a conceptual framework for the governance of sustainable freight transport, which the jury honoured for its’ originality and policy relevance. Today, Nihan is an Associate Professor in Sustainable Urban Development at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, where she is teaching students in the Masters and Doctoral programmes in Sustainable Urban Development, she helps to form the next generation of innovative transport leaders, many of them women. Her forthcoming book is, appropriately, titled “Women, Work and Mobilities”.

This year’s award winner Anne der Bortoli also has a clear take on gender and transport: “Women are generally under-represented in expert panels, academia, PhD programs, and industrial leading positions higher education. This is particularly noticeable in some STEM subjects, to the point that it’s almost jarring, she says. “Yet women have proven time and again that we can overcome barriers and smash glass ceilings, and this is exactly what we must do in order to see long-lasting positive change.

We must be confident, we must challenge discrimination, and we must take action for what moves us. Women need a large variety of role models. I urge all female researchers who work in transport-related fields to apply for the next ITF Young Researcher of the Year Award. Why? Because every time you give yourself a chance to win, you’ve made a major step towards gender equality.”

2929 Young Researcher of the Year Award, Anne de Bortoli

Emma Latham-Jones is a Young Associate at the International Transport Forum. You can read more about the 2020 ITF Young Researcher of the Year Award, Anne de Bortoli’s research, and find the recording of the ceremony here.