In this episode we speak with Dr Deepty Jain of the the Indian Institute of Technology, about the work being done to assess the impact of heatwaves on women when traveling in India, and potential solutions.
Below is an excerpt of the conversation, edited for length and clarity.
Holger Dalkmann
So can you give us a little bit more insight from any kind of research in terms of what are the big issues that arise for women you mentioned about the time of travel, the mode of travel is so their roles. So what, what is research telling us?. Where is the main difference between men and women when it comes to the commute?
Dr Deepty Jain
So, the research that we are doing and the research that we have conducted in the previous years is giving us a lot of insight on the differences, the way that women travel. And I will touch upon three types of trips that women make, when they are travelling for work.
So this study that we conducted in Vishakha Putnam had shown us that, majority of the women walk to work within the same income levels as compared to their male counterparts. And, that tells us about their dependency on a particular mode of transport. Then, this is another research we conducted, which was for Delhi, and we were trying to understand how different children by age, gender and income are accessing schools.
And here we found that girl children are less dependent on private vans. And then we went through a lot of literature about why it would be happening. And then we found that safety and security concerns associated with any shared mode of transport deter parents from sending their girl child to school by private vans.
And then third, the ongoing research that we are doing right now, again, over here, we have found that, for various purposes, excluding work, women tend to walk more as compared to men. Now, why is this happening? One could be the availability of resources, whether there are multiple vehicles, for example, even if the vehicles are there. Do I know how to drive?
Then third, in the household itself, whether these vehicles are available. Other than vehicle availability, it could be because of existing public transportation systems. So can women use public transportation systems? I would say yes. But then we have to understand their nature of trips. We found that the majority of the women in our data set, are making trips or I would rather term them as tours.
And these tours involve multiple, trip chains. So, for example, they start from home, go to school, pick up the kids, go to the shop, buy some, certain stuff, then come back to home, which would mean three trips. They may be short distances, let’s say 1 to 2 km at maximum for each trip. But that whole tour is 3 trips.
So if I look at the total distance travelled during that, the tour will be huge. But then because it is multiple trips, their ability to use public transportation systems therefore reduces because these kinds of trip chains cannot be handled by a large scale public transportation system. So, and then, like what I said, is the ability.
Next is do I have resources and can I afford it? So there are these multiple, you know, types of trips that we need to look at. And then it’s not only women, then we have to look into women and income together. Then we have to look into women and the types of trips they are making.
And then we have to understand how these trips get aligned and how the different kinds of modes are being used for different purposes, which results in their exposure.
Links
- Gender and income based variability in travel choices in Vishakhapatnam, India
- Hot weather and travel: how best to meet the needs of women in Delhi
- Gendered approach of addressing adaptation capacity to hot conditions
- Narrating Lives/Labour: Documenting Domestic Labour in Kolkata
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