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Mobility and Women: Beyond Pink Transportation
Urban mobility policies in Mexico (and, in fact, all around Latin America) resemble a garment factory that produces one size of shirts and trousers, regardless of whether its customers are tall or short, fat or thin. There is one exception: Regardless of the model, available clothing will be likely made for men, even though half of those wearing it are women. This is nothing new: The historical one-size-fits-all maxim that guides the region’s transport authorities aims to meet the travel needs of an idealized average citizen, the problem with this is this “ideal” citizen is systematically male.
It is true that there are services and measures especially implemented for women, such as the Atenea bus service in Mexico City, the “pink” taxis, or women-only cars or the differentiated spots in articulated buses, such as in the Metrobus system. They aim to tackle a problem that is both real and serious. Let the data speak for themselves: a survey conducted in 2014 by the Thomson Reuters Foundation revealed that the public transportation systems in three Latin American cities (Mexico City, Bogota and Lima, in that order) are considered the most dangerous in the world for women. At the local level, estimates by the National Institute for Women (Instituto Nacional de las Mujeres) indicate that 65% of women users of public transport in Mexico City have been sexually harassed while traveling. In turn, the study El porqué de la relación entre género y transporte (Why Gender and Transport are related), published by the Inter-American Development Bank in 2015, indicates that 40% of women users change their clothes to avoid attacks while using the Subway System, and 4.5% state that they have left their workplace or study because of the insecurity they perceive in this system. However, “pink services” can help reduce violence against women on public transport, but their use in the long-term can be counterproductive, perpetuating violent gender divisions and differences. Likewise, the implementation of this type of measures may result in negative operational effects, such as inefficient use of the fleet, decrease in frequencies, and overcrowding of units, or stations intended for users of both genders.
Finally, existing gender-focused transport policies address the problem of insecurity, but not the daily needs of women, whose travel patterns are totally different from those of men. These differences, which are manifested both in the characteristics of the trips and the means of transport, are generated mainly by the division of roles in the family, work, and community. In summary, there are four main features of the mobility of women in cities: a more complex travel pattern than that of men (more trips with more destinations and all throughout the day), less access to private motorized modes, high dependence on public transport, and more trips made on foot.
Women’s highly different travel pattern is mainly due to the heavy burden of household chores on their shoulders and the high rate of travel with other family members (mainly children), which is referred to as mobility of care. As an example, a study of the World Bank analyzing travel behavior in Buenos Aires1 found that new-born babies in a household means a 13% increase in the trips made by the mother, while the number of trips made by the father remains practically unchanged. Another research, based on the analysis of the US National Household Travel Survey (NHTS), revealed that, in a family, 61% of the responsibility to drop off or pick up children from school is borne by mothers.2 This high burden of travel, regardless of peak or off-peak hours, severely limits women’s professional, work and social lives, and are forced to work, study or socialize in places close to home in order to complete all the activities on their daily agenda. This, among other things, severely affects their income, since this forces them to favor proximity at the expense of employment quality. In this regard, an analysis of mobility data in Great Britain carried out by Barbara Noble3 found that women’s trips are on average 25.6% shorter than trips made by men. In Latin America the situation is the same, if not worse.
This adds to the traditionally lower income of women, and the result is a highly differentiated modal split, marked by lower car use and greater dependence on public transport. An analysis of the Origen Destino (Origin Destination) survey conducted in 2007 in the Metropolitan Area of the Valley of Mexico shows data that speak volumes: while 64% of women’s trips are made using public transport, this figure drops to 58% in the case of men. Unfortunately, this survey did not take account of trips made on foot; if it had done so, it would certainly have found a large percentage of those correspond to women. Take the example of other Latin American cities: In Santiago, 55.3% of trips made by women are on foot (39.5% in the case of men), while in Bogota the numbers are 51% and 39% respectively.4
Much of the problem in public transport, beyond the discomfort, insecurity and tardiness that characterize these services in Latin America, lies in a planning traditionally oriented towards catering to typically-male needs: predominant services from the periphery to the center, shortage of local services designed to cover short distances, low frequencies in off-peak hours, and units not designed for comfortable and safe transport with children, a task that, as previously stated, traditionally lies in women.
Not even the use of the bicycle, which has escalated in Latin America in recent years, escapes this reality. Despite being an ideal means of transport to cover short and medium distances, the type of trips women mostly make in the city, it is still vastly male. Thus, in Mexico City, only 1 in 10 bicycle trips is made by a woman.5 The reality is not very different in the rest of Latin American cities, where this number rarely rises above 30%, as pointed out by a study I carried out with Francisca Rojas and recently published by the Inter-American Development Bank.6
What to do then?
First, governments must make an effort to recruit more women, both in managerial and technical positions, into transport authorities, which are predominantly male, whose visions and travel needs consciously or unconsciously tend to guide sector policies. This should be supported by incentives for women to enroll in careers (particularly engineering) related to urban mobility planning and management.
At the same time, there is an urgent need to fill the enormous information gap on the subject. It is therefore essential to conduct periodic interdisciplinary studies (obtaining data from the one carried out in 2007 was only possible thanks to the knowledge and patience of an expert) to help understand gender-specific travel patterns and needs. The lack of a reliable, updated and easily accessible database is an unfortunate omission in cities that like to call themselves “inclusive”.
On a more practical level, a sustainable, low-carbon policy cannot be achieved by facilitating the use of cars, either for men or women, but by strengthening public transport networks and improving the conditions for walking and cycling. In this sense, implementing more local public transport services without such significant frequency differences between peak and off-peak hours is a measure that clearly benefits those who make short, near-home, all-day trips. Promoting intermodality (the combined use of different means of transport, public and private) also helps women, who in a large extent experience changing transport needs throughout the day. A good example of this is the Ecobici public bicycle system, highly complementary to other means of transport, in which 40% of trips are made by women, a percentage that quadruples the proportion of trips made by women on private bicycles.
At the same time, any public policy on sustainable transport should consider improving the environment in which trips are made, implementing a crime prevention approach through the design of public space. This is essential for women who, as mentioned above, make many more trips on foot, on average, than men. Such a measure can also encourage using the bicycle, which in many cases doesn't happen because of the perception of insecurity in cycling paths. In this sense, applying principles of universal accessibility in public space and means of transport particularly benefits those who traditionally take care of children and the elderly, including, of course, traveling with them.
One final consideration: More than one will rightly say that these measures only perpetuate the conditions of inequality in the excessive burden of travel related to household chores and the care of other household members. Yes, it is true. All of the above may be advisable in the short and medium-term, but if policies and programs are to be truly inclusive and sustainable, they must be geared towards breaking the vicious circle of mobility inequality. The solution lies in initiatives that often go beyond the field of mobility. For example, extended periods of parental leave for men could help distribute care work, which largely falls on women. At the same time, the greater number of nurseries, school transport systems, and the creation of safe school paths are measures that, while giving more independence to children, free adults (usually women) from a great burden of travel.
And finally, a city with a balanced number of trips between men and women, with mobility options that are equally accessible to both, is a reflection of a fairer and more inclusive society. Mobility and urban development policies cannot be left out of the challenge.