Gender equity in urban transportation infrastructure

Abstract

Issues like gender pay gap, access to education, health care and employment opportunities are not new to women. The role of cultural patriarchy and traditions have played an important role in limiting opportunities for women. In today’s scenario, despite all the modernisation and governments launching initiatives to support women, something still lacks. Upon a closer look at the design of the society, we can identify that transportation, both public and private are a hurdle for women in accessing necessary services. Given society’s idea of women being indoors and their responsibility of managing the family elders, kids and the household chores has unwittingly influenced a lot of the transportation infrastructure in India as well as abroad. Issues like availability and safety of transport plague women across the world, limiting their opportunities and hence contributing to the issues highlighted in the beginning. Coupled with the lack of infrastructure, there is also little to no acknowledgment on the impact of these issues. Certain measures like women only coaches in buses/trains have been implemented in countries like India, Pakistan etc, but the system needs to evolve way beyond that keeping in mind the gender issues while designing the infrastructure. There is also a vast difference in the perception of safety of transport between men and women. Not just an individual’s access to transport, but even employment opportunities in the transportation field are dominated by men. This can also be attributed to the lack of safety measures and perception of outdoor jobs as manly. Addressing these needs is crucial for a more sustainable and equitable development as well as economic independence and empowerment of women. We have divided our analysis into two chapters. The first chapter focuses on the public sector, on how policy design has evolved in this area and how technology can help alleviate some of the issues of safety and accessibility in developing countries. The second chapter focuses on how gender bias comes into picture while accessing private transport, learning how to drive and even during safety design of cars which limit the overall accessibility of cars to women.