Bridging the gap between gender and transport.doc

Bridging the gap between gender and transport (Chapter 1)By Priyanthi Fernando & Gina PorterThis book is about women, gender and transport. When the case studies that form the main part of this book were commissioned, there were only a few pioneering studies on the subject (notably Doran 1990, Bryceson and Howe 1993, Malmberg Calvo 1994a). Transport professionals were mainly concerned about how transport infrastructure, mainly road networks and feeder roads, could be efficiently and cost effectively constructed and maintained. The emphasis for poverty eradication was on reducing isolation and improving peoples access to goods and services. There was a general assumption that if infrastructure was provided, transport services would follow, peoples mobility would improve and they would be able to travel and access goods and services easily. The discussion has since moved on. It is now recognised that mobility is crucial for accessing goods and services and that roads are simply not enough (Dawson and Barwell 1993). The transport sector is paying greater attention to the need to stimulate transport services, particularly in rural areas of the lower income countries, and is more conscious of the need to enable rural people to have and use transport technologies, particularly the more affordable intermediate means of transport Intermediate means of transport or IMTs as they are often called are those transport technologies that fall between walking and four wheeled motorised transport such as cars and trucks. They include pack animals, animal carts, bicycles, rickshaws, motorcycles, three wheeled scooters etc. ( Malmberg Calvo 1994b, Barwell 1996 , Starkey 2000) Gender, however, has not been fully mainstreamed into either the infrastructure debate or the debate on rural transport services and IMTs. Agencies promoting labour based road construction and maintenance as a means of creating employment and incomes have made an effort to increase womens participation in labour based activities. There are a number of pilot projects and several guidelines, toolkits and the like that encourage transport sector professionals to develop more gender sensitive transport interventions (Booth et al, 2000). But, despite evidence (mostly from sub-Saharan Africa) that women and men in rural households have responsibility for different transport tasks; that women often carry a heavier burden in terms of time and effort spent on transport, and that with less access and control over resources, they have less opportunities than men to use transport technologies that could alleviate their burden, gender issues are still peripheral to much of rural transport policy and practice (Sibanda, 2001).While transport professionals have taken little account of gender, issues of access and mobility have been marginalised in much of the discourse on gender and development. Gender analysts, focusing on gender roles, resources and relations, have rarely considered in detail the role that improved transport plays in providing women with the resources to meet their practical needs (for example, enabling them to fulfil their responsibilities for water and firewood collection). Few have looked at how improving access and increasing mobility can address more strategic gender issues. Womens transport burden contributes to womens time poverty. Lack of time is a key constraint to women building up their assets and reducing their vulnerability. By reducing womens transport burden, development interventions can increase their productivity and incomes and enhance their assets; they can also have more time to rest, to enjoy social life, to participate in community activities. Increasing womens mobility can empower women to take greater control of their lives by increasing their access to markets and their exposure to education, training and information, and by providing more opportunities for their political participation. The case studies in this book aim to support the dialogue between transport and gender professionals. Written by individuals on both sides of the divide, they use a gender perspective to look at a range of transport issues in a variety of locations. Mainly they are about women, poor women in rural and urban communities, and how transport and transport interventions affect their lives. Through their diverse experiences we are able to develop some insights into how gender relations and the gender division of labour influence women and mens transport needs and patterns and their access to and use of transport infrastructure and technologies. Their stories also illustrate how transport provision (or lack of it) impacts on their lives. We hope that this will add to the growing body of knowledge which both transport professionals and gender specialists can use in their work. The rest of this chapter gives a background to the methodology of the research programme that generated the case studies and highlights some of the key issues arising from the selection of case studies in this book.The research programmeThe research programme used a small amount of funds from the UK Department for International Development and initiated an innovative research/training/capacity building approach that provided a somewhat unusual means of gathering a wide spread of data over a short period and in diverse settings. Potential participants were identified through a variety of means, but in particular through the international and national networks of the International Forum for Rural Transport and Development. They were invited to submit broad ideas for a small piece of original in-country research on gender and transport which could be completed in six months within a modest budget of $1000. Those who submitted proposals were invited to a one-week workshop early in 1998 (Kampala for Africa, Calcutta for Asia).This preliminary workshop was crucial to the development of the individual case studies. Participants at the workshops worked with each other and with facilitators to help shape the research design for their study. Through a series of preliminary briefings by facilitators, followed by small group sessions (where groups were mixed by country, academic background and gender) and then by group and individual presentations, each researcher identified and refined their research questions and developed specific activities needed to obtain answers to those questions. They decided on the methods they would employ, the time-table for the research and the format for their final presentation. Following completion of the research, the participants prepared their results for presentation and discussion at a regional seminar (held in Sri Lanka in June 1999 for Asia participants and in South Africa in July 1999 for Africa participants). In particular, they were asked to consider the implications of their results for the preparation of guidelines for people involved in rural transport - communities, practitioners and policy makers. The regional seminars, to which 150 policy makers and practitioners were also invited, gave project participants an opportunity to reflect on the results of their own research in its broader regional context, drawing comparisons with work elsewhere and, hopefully, contributing to locally-targeted policy interventions. This approach proved to be a cost-effective exploratory research tool and an effective methodology for harnessing local knowledge, expertise and latent research skills. Almost all the case-study contributors were African or Asian NGO workers, activists, or researchers working closely with the communities that they researched. Two-thirds were women. The programme created opportunities for raising awareness of issues, getting a wide range of stakeholders committed to their resolution and disseminating the results effectively. The case studiesThis book includes 19 case studies from those prepared for and discussed at the final regional seminars A full set of papers is available in summary form in the IFRTD publication of the proceedings of the Balancing the Load seminars.: 10 from Africa and 9 from Asia, representing 9 African countries and 4 Asian countries. They encompass semi-arid, savanna and rain forest environments; plainlands and mountain topography; Moslem, Hindu, Buddhist and Christian populations; semi-subsistence to highly commercialised economies; rural and peri-urban localities; areas with high and low population densities. The authors of the case studies have approached gender and transport from a variety of angles, and have employed a range of research methods. Most use a mix of participatory rural appraisal (PRA) techniques involving key informant interviews with check lists and observation, sometimes coupled with larger semi-structured questionnaire surveys and/or focus groups. THE THEMESThere are major regional differences between Asia and Africa, particularly in the provision of transport services and the prevalence of a variety of modes of transport. In the Asian countries, the public sector plays a much more active role in the provision of transport services (buses and railways). Construction of roads and development of transport infrastructure in Asia seems to stimulate use of intermediate means of transport such as bicycles, rickshaws and motorcycles, as well as motorised transport. In Africa this is not necessarily the case. The similarities in the gendered impact of transport provision between the regions are, however, more striking than the differences. In the following sections we pick out some of the major themes that cut across the regions. The themes are not exhaustive. The case studies include insights into many more issues that will be of interest to transport and gender professionals but which, for considerations of space, we have not included here.The Significance of CulturePerhaps one of the most significant overall observations in these, as in so many other gender and development studies, is that cultural rules are rarely unfavourable to men! They merely reinforce unequal gendered power relationships within households. Men can usually travel where they wish, by whatever means are available, so long as they have the funds (though Raos study in Bihar, India, indicates that low-caste men have travel problems because of harassment by officials). By contrast, women may be constrained by restrictions on where, how and with whom they travel. And there are other constraints on womens mobility imposed by work burdens inside and outside the home and by lack of access to resources which could generate funds to purchase transport. Despite these constraints, women in much of sub-Saharan Africa and in Asian countries like Nepal travel vast distances each day in their traditional capacity as (unpaid) porters. Culture is a strong determinant of womens ability to use transport technologies, though there are important local variations in what transport is permissible for women to use and what is not. In eastern and northern Uganda women ride bicycles while in the central region bicycles are the property and domain of men (Iga). Among some ethnic groups in Burkina Faso women are forbidden to ride bicycles, in some regions they are given a donkey as part of their dowry, while in the Yatenga province, bicycles and donkeys are almost exclusively used by men, and tradition strictly forbids women to ride donkeys and horses, which will incur the risk of young girls losing their virginity (Ouedraogo). Women in Africa and Asia seem to have internalised these cultural conventions. In Yatenga Province, Burkina Faso, as in Ahmedebad, India, they rarely question the tradition nor complain and are often more willing to contribute to purchase a means of transport for their husbands or grown-up sons than to purchase their own (Ouedraogo, Shresthova et al.)! In Tanzania, Mwankusye finds that both men and women subscribe to the socially constructed attitude that IMTs are for men. Some religious practices, notably the practice of female seclusion in some (but by no means all) Moslem areas such as parts of Bangladesh and northern Nigeria (Matin et al, Yunusa et al.), influence gender roles and shape womens ability to benefit from transport improvements. Yunusa et al. suggest that road improvement in their study village has had substantial impact on men, who now make more use of improved transport services for taking the sick to hospital, produce to markets and refuse to their farms. There is less impact on women because secluded women do not generally travel out of the village, and as the majority of women do not own farmland, they have not benefited from improved road access to agricultural inputs and markets. The availability of improved transport services may not aid women much if they are unable to take advantage of the improved access, and as Robson (2000) suggests in another study, the availability of bicycles and motorbikes can actually reinforce seclusion if women are no longer needed as 'beasts of burden'.These studies strongly suggest that we should not consider the influence of culture or religious traditions as immutable. Conventions like female seclusion rarely apply where extreme poverty prevails (Callaway 1987 pp. 56-68; Porter 1989; Robson 2000). In Bangladesh, despite the practice of female seclusion, women from poorer, destitute families face fewer restrictions on their mobility than do more well-to-do women, whose families are more concerned with maintaining the familys izzat (respectability and honor). Matin et al provide several examples of poor women who have been driven by economic circumstances to challenge social and religious conventions and become more mobile. Changing perceptions of bicycles as a modern means of transport has meant that women riding bicycles in the town of Narayanghat in Nepal are considered desirable wives (Seddon & Shrestha) and in the cashew processing area of Sri Lanka, the introduction of processing technologies has significantly changed womens status and mobility patterns (Wettasinghe & Pannila). One of the most encouraging case studies is Nitya Raos review of a cycle-riding scheme linked to a literacy programme in Pudukkottai, Tamil Nadu, India. Women in Pudukkottai still do not own bicycles, and their use of bicycles has in many cases led to increased workloads, but Rao argues strongly that women have gained self-confidence and self esteem from learning to cycle. Raos study also shows how a critical mass of women challenging conventions can effect changes in social and cultural attitudes. Household Structures and Womens RolesHousehold structures, family composition and size, and womens role in the household affect the gender allocation of tasks and responsibilities and womens mob