Pri's blog

Given that it is International Women’s Day, it is probably a good time to reflect on how the transport sector does (or does not) engage with women’s transport needs.  Of course this is not a new subject,  but despite efforts by several women and men, notably in the International Forum for Rural Transport and Development (IFRTD), the World Bank’s SSATP, and other networks interested in bringing some equity into the transport sector, the problem still remains.   Women’s issues, and particularly the issues of  poor urban and rural women,  remain marginal to transport sector planning.  It is not to say that the sector has not progressed.  When, as  the IFRTD’s first Executive Secretary, I presented the Balancing the Load proposal to what was then DFID’s Knowledge and Research (KAR) funding arm in 1996,  I am told the (male) engineers reviewing the proposals laughed at our audacity and dismissed the proposal with hardly a glance. Balanc...

I have been having a conversation with Jamie Enoch, Research and Policy Analyst at the UKCDS, on a study that the UKCDS did for DFID on Mapping Infrastructure Research for Development .  You can read the exchange of words  on the Linked In AFCAP (African Community Access Programme) group if you are a registered member of Linked In, and are inclined to join the group. .  Much of it is show casing the work of the International Forum for Rural Transport and Development (IFRTD) , which, though supported by DFID for several years, received no mention in the report’s chapter on transport.   Despite this omission, it is good to know that another analyst, e.g. Steven Jones, an Associate Professor at the University of Alabama, working with AFCAP on identifying " rural transport issues in Sub-Saharn Africa (SSA) to be targeted for future research... aimed at developing a more comprehensive understanding of the overall health impacts (crashes, polllution. healthca...