In the first episode of our sixth series, we talk with Dr. Kalpana Viswanath. She is the Co-founder and CEO of Safetipin, a social enterprise that uses technology and apps to collect data for the safe movement of women in urban spaces and towards gender responsive urban systems.
We talk how harassment, violence and the burden of care impact women’s access to transport, work, education and leisure. How technology is used to gather data to create safer transport networks around cities and what needs to be done by local and national governments and international NGOs and donors to better serve all transport users.
Below is an excerpt of the conversation, edited for length and clarity.
Holger Dalkmann
Lets get started with the general challenges we are facing when it comes to the infrastructure and transport services particularly for vulnerable road users. The key component of any infrastructure has to be that it caters for all of its users. It needs to be inclusive. Yet, we know that transport all over the world is not inclusive. Certainly not inclusive for women and girls. Speaking as somebody who has dedicated many years to understanding the challenges that women and girls face when they travel, could you describe the gender gap in the South Asia region and places where you work?
Kalpana Viswanath
Yeah. Thank you. Holger, so as you said, 2 billion of the world’s population lives in this region, which is very nearly one out of four people on this globe are from, are South Asians. On the gender gap, it’s a mixed bag, but we tend to perform quite poorly because this is a region which is, I think, beset with several problems of history, of patriarchy, and economic challenges.
I think there are three broad issues that we need to kind of focus on when we look at gender equity in mobility and transport.
One is the issue of violence and sexual harassment and safety, that is is faced. I know that, you know, a few years ago, Cornell University had a study across 16 countries, and they found that over 80% of women and this was the sample of about 16,000 people. Women had reported they had faced some kind of sexual harassment while transport while traveling in public transport.
So we are talking about a very big problem. I mean, the W.H.O. says that one out of three women has faced violence. In the transport sector we specifically find, so, for example, in India, there have been several studies in Delhi. You know, a study by UN women, said that nearly 90% women in Delhi had said they had faced some kind of sexual harassment.
Women talk about how they change their travel mode because of lack of safety, lack of good mobility. So this is a global issue, but it’s very prevalent in the South Asian region, across Indian cities and other cities in the region.
And this the reason why it’s so important is because a lack of safety has an impact on the lives of women and girls, which is well beyond an act of violence. What happens is because of lack of safety, women have less access to opportunities. So certain jobs you may not take up, you know, if there isn’t good public transport, you know, in So I think the important point is that the lack of safety impacts women and girls right to the city and their access to opportunities for education and employment and leisure.
Leisure is not even part of the discourse. Right? Because we’re talking about education, employment. But, you know, the right to the city includes well-being. Urban wellbeing. The ability to go to a park, you know, or enjoy, do some exercise and actually you will find that across South Asia, public spaces tend to be male dominated and I think this is an important thing we need to understand.
The second issue, which we need to look at when we talk about gender and urban mobility and equity is the work of care, you know, and I think this is an important one that women and men tend to move around the city differently because the burden of the work of care falls on women.
So in Asia and the Pacific, women spend four times more time, four times more of their time on unpaid care work. Now, these are big numbers, okay? I mean, the thing is, like we said, that 16.4 billion hours per day are spent on unpaid care work across the world. So, until the transport system, transport decision making begins to recognise that women move differently.
And part of the reason they move differently is because they bear the burden of care work, which includes not only childcare but also elderly care. For example, worldwide, 2.1 billion people needed care in 2015, and this is expected to reach 2.3 billion people by 2030. So we’re talking about, you know, a world where we cannot look at transport as, you know, just, you know, people going to work in the morning and coming back in the evening.
So I think these are the two big issues which, the transport system and transport decision making needs to focus on to truly become gender equitable. And the third one which we can maybe discuss a little later, is really the issue of women in the transport sector.
Links
- Ensuring women’s right to the city
- Index shows what makes a city safe for women
- Lessons learnt through gender-based travel data collection and related sexual harassment in Sub-Saharan Africa
- Post-COVID-19 Mobility: Key levers to reform urban transport systems
- Moving Ahead: Urban Mobility Reforms for Post-COVID Resilience in India
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