Gender Equality in urban transport provision: a chance to build back equal

                                   Photo: KL Sentral (before the pandemic)

 The  recently concluded ESCAP Regional Meeting for Asia and the Pacific “City and Transport: Safety, efficiency and sustainability” had a session on Gender Responsive Urban Transport Policies.  I was invited to participate in that session.  I had five minutes for my intervention and this is what I said.

I wanted to make a case for approaching transport provision from a rights perspective, and from the perspective of a state’s obligations towards the protection and fulfilment rights of all its citizens.   Cities and economies  are not just  spaces and processes that exist independently of the people that inhabit them and make them work, and it was  encouraging to see that several speakers at the UNESCAP meeting had  begun to put people at the centre of their thinking.

The importance of centring people was reinforced by the COVID19 pandemic experience.    We saw that it was people who helped  us get through the crisis, not our largely unequal social and economic systems.   We must remember also that  the people who are making the difference are people that till the pandemic happened were almost invisible in our lives and whose labour society valued the least – the front line health workers, the cleaners, the drivers, paid and unpaid care workers – and we know that many of these people come from less privileged communities, communities that have been  spatially pushed  to the fringes of our cities by urban planning processes and gentrification.  Many of these workers are women

It is not enough to  recognise their invaluable contributions to our health and survival.  We must acknowledge that they have rights – especially the right to be treated without discrimination in any way. And we must take an intersectional approach because women are not  a homogenous group.

This is what the Universal Declaration of Human Rights promises us.  But there are other conventions and treaties that elaborate on these rights, and are particularly pertinent to the conversation on gender responsiveness. The Convention of All forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW)is crucial because it   is a convention that has been ratified by almost all of the countries in the Asia region.   It doesn’t explicitly mention transport, but its articles and its general recommendations point to the need for states to take responsibility to end gender stereotyping, to ensure that all women have equal access to health, education, employment opportunities and equal political participation. It recognises women’s role in the care economy.   We know that mobility is important for women to have this equal access and that women spend almost 50% of their travel time on “mobility of care” – i.e. on trips related to caregiving and household responsibilities. 

More importantly, CEDAW represents an international commitment  made by our country governments, and it creates  an OBLIGATION by governments, and government institutions  including municipalities and transport authorities  to ensure that services are provided without discrimination to everyone.  It also provides the rights holders - the women and marginalised communities - a framework to hold governments and government institutions accountable when such services are NOT provided. 

The pandemic was not gender neutral.  It was socially and economically more severe on women because of existing inequalities, because women account for 70% of the world’s health and social care sector, because they are overrepresented in some of the industries that were hardest hit (food, retail and entertainment) and because they comprise the majority of workers in the informal sector.  Not only did women lose jobs, but their care burden also increased.  

The pandemic also caused huge disruptions to urban transport. But it gave us a glimpse of how different our cities could be - less pollution, fewer road accidents.  I would like to think that glimpse has provided governments with an opportunity to reimagine, to redesign transport systems and policies,  not just building back better, but BUILDING BACK EQUAL and fulfilling governments’ commitments under CEDAW.     This means recognising gender differences in travel behaviour, and focusing on addressing the demands of care, instead of only focusing on the demands of economic activity and trade. So asking questions like - what does safe and comfortable travel mean for women?  Will electric scooters for example support women  who inevitably travel with children or domestic loads?  How can we strengthen  the accessibility to public transport systems which  are extensively used by women (who often do not have access to private vehicles)?   How do we complement these with  some of the technological and digital innovations to improve women’s access and safety? Encouraging more women to participate as transport designers and planners may help us achieve this.