CHAPTER 1
Introduction: Gender, roads, and mobility in Asia
Kyoko Kusakabe
Research into transport planning and practice has consistently failed to apply a social science perspective to transport policy or to fully understand the way in which social organization can play a role in determining patterns of transport and travel. (Dobbs, 2007: 86)
Globalization has increased the mobility of goods and people. To strengthen the economy, regional economic integration has been facilitated around the world and the Asian region is no exception. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) as well as Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) are all aiming to strengthen their regional economic connections, and cross-border transport facilities are one of the core activities to achieve the aim. Documents by international organizations reveal widespread support for cross-border road infrastructure development:
[Cross-border infrastructure projects] enlarge market access, reduce economic distance and facilitate trade, investment, and labor flows. The resulting intensification of cross-border economic activities can create employment, particularly in the labor-intensive sectors of DMCs (developing member countries), thus contributing to poverty reduction. (ADB, 2006a: 8)
However, who will be able to benefit from such infrastructure development? Since infrastructure development is being expanded quickly and over vast areas (as seen in Chapters 2 to 5 in this book), we urgently need to assess how the expanded road infrastructure development is affecting the poor, and what are its impacts on social structures such as gender relations and gender equality?
It has long been pointed out that road development can increase disparity (McCall, 1977; Leinbach, 2000), and since the 1970s, women's access to transport has been explored along with its implications for gender inequalities (Dobbs, 2007). However, with few exceptions (Dawson and Barwell, 1993; Grieco et al., 1996; Turner and Fouracre, 1995), most of the research conducted in the 1970s–90s on women and transport was on Western societies and in urban areas; research on developing countries and rural areas has been less common (Law, 1999).
The book Balancing the Load (Fernando and Porter) published in 2002 was hence an important contribution to the gap in knowledge and literature. With 10 cases from rural Africa and 9 from rural South Asia, the book discussed women's problems in transport, and how culture, gender roles, and household structures affect women's and men's access to transport. It discussed how women's restricted access to means of transport, seclusion of women, and women's reproductive roles in the household all limit women's access to travel. Women's safety and health issues, including the impact of carrying heavy head loads, were also discussed. The International Forum for Rural Transport and Development (IFRTD), who managed the study project, have continued to actively promote gender equality in transport, and set up the Gender and Transport Network (GATNET) (Riverson et al., 2005). SIDA (Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency) developed a handbook for mainstreaming gender perspective in the rural transportation sector as early as 1997. The World Bank developed in 2006 a gender and transport resource guide, which consists of six modules to guide people's understanding of gender issues in transport. The Asian Development Bank (ADB) organized an Asia and Pacific Regional Meeting on mainstreaming gender equality in infrastructure projects in 2008. The International Road Federation sponsored the global Transport Knowledge Partnership (gTKP) and also hosts resources on gender on its website (under the theme of 'social development').
In spite of all these efforts, the level of gender mainstreaming in the transport sector remains low. Bamberger and Lebo (1998 in Peters, 2001) reported that in fiscal 1997 only 4 per cent of World Bank projects included a gender component or gender actions. In comparison, 67 per cent of the projects in population, health and nutrition and 35 per cent of the projects in agriculture included a gender component. The level of integration has, however, improved over the years. The ratio of projects that are 'gender-informed' in the Bank's operation in the transport sector was 11 per cent in 2006, which increased to 16 per cent in 2009. However, this is the second lowest among all the sectors that the Bank operates in, the highest being health and nutrition with 74 per cent in 2006 and 86 per cent in 2009 (World Bank, 2010). A gender review of ADB loans revealed that 29 per cent of all loans during 1998–2004 had effective gender mainstreaming, while only 3 per cent of all loans in the transport and communication sector during 2002–04 had such a component (ADB, 2006b). Gender and transport, despite its importance for women, is not covered fully in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) as the Economic Commission for Europe's (2009) Inland Transport Committee reported:
Transport is hardly mentioned in the Millennium Development Goals either as a cause of or as a potential solution to poverty. However, transport infrastructure and services have a strong influence on empowerment of vulnerable groups such as women, by reducing time spent on domestic tasks, timely and affordable delivery of basic services such as health, education and water and sanitation. Thus, access to transport services and mobility for women could be considered critical factors for achieving the MDGs by 2015. (Economic Commission for Europe, 2009: 2)
Where are we in gender and transport?
Given the vast gap outlined above, both academic and grey literature has been published since the late 1990s to 2000s on gender and transport in developing countries (see Fernando, 1998; Fernando and Porter, 2002; Gajewski et al., 2007; Mandel, 2004; Parikesit and Czuczman, 2006; Porter, 1995, 2002; Riverson et al., 2005; Tanzarn, 2003; Turner and Fouracre, 1995; World Bank, 2006). Turner and Fouracre's (1995) work is considered groundbreaking for comprehensively mapping out issues on gender and transport in developing countries. Fernando and Porter's (2002) Balancing the Load furthered the points made in Turner and Fouracre through a series of case studies. The World Bank commissioned a series of case studies on gender and transport in 2003 in Peru, Bangladesh, Uganda, and other countries. Gajewski et al.'s (2007) work for ADB suggested a gender analysis methodology for gender and transport. Major gender issues identified are as follows:
• Women's triple burden restricts women's mobility: because of women's reproductive work, they are not expected to travel far away from home.
• Cultural restriction on women's mobility: women's restriction to travel is further exacerbated by the cultural seclusion of women. In some societies, women are not permitted to travel alone.
• Women's access to means of transportation: fewer women than men ride motorbikes or private cars, and even fewer own them. Women often have low priority in using vehicles owned by the household. Women sometimes have difficulty accessing public transportation because of security concerns.
• Women's different travel needs: because of the gender roles, women's travel needs differ from those of men. For example, they need more convenience in transport for fetching water, fetching fuelwood, sending children to school, etc.
Ortoleva and Brenman (2003 in Dobbs, 2007: 89) show that transportation itself is gendered. It divides the world into public and private, and creates tension for women since transportation traditionally takes place in public places where women are excluded. Women's ability to be mobile is facilitated and constrained in different contexts (Mandel, 2004), while local circumstances and environment affect the way roads lead to economic and social change (Leinbach, 2000). Women's lower access to transport can impact on:
• Girls' education: difficulties getting to school can discourage girls from continuing schooling.
• Access to health services: maternal mortality is high when transport to hospitals is not easily accessible.
• Access to information and training: since women are expected not to travel, they often do not attend training outside their villages, and hence they have less access to information.
• Opportunities for social visits and strengthening of social capital: if women travel less than men, they will have fewer opportunities to make new contacts as well as strengthen old ones.
• Health: carrying heavy loads on their heads or on their backs can have implications for women's health.
• Women's time burden for fetching water and marketing goods.
• Opportunities for income-generating activities.
According to Mandel (2004: 284):
By addressing women's ability to be mobile, development scholars and practitioners may provide opportunities for women to enhance their income generating capacity. In so doing, they may also open up spaces within which women can gain greater autonomy and independence. Facilitating mobility for women may well provide them with opportunities to reconfigure the gender ideologies that shape their lives.
Hjorthol (2000) on her case of Oslo mentions that mobility is a significant prerequisite to access opportunities in the labour market, and Hannam et al. (2006) note that the importance of transport is not only to move from one location to the other, but also to open up opportunities. The negative impacts of transport development on women include:
• HIV/Aids: road development has implication on the prevalence of HIV/ Aids, and how women become more vulnerable to infection (ILO, 2006).
• Losing their markets and business: highways can wipe out roadside stalls where women have been selling their wares (see also Chapters 6, 7, 9, and 12).
• Road safety: women are not necessarily more vulnerable to road accidents (Turner and Fouracre, 1995), but they are the ones who look after the family members, especially those injured or disabled by road accidents. Women spend more time looking after children who get injured by vehicles. In Laos, fearing that without their constant supervision children would run out on the road, women stopped travelling out after a highway was built in front of their village (Kusakabe and Saphakdy, 2010).
Moving and not moving
The gender and transport literature has highlighted the importance of accessibility – not only simple mobility of moving from one location to the other, but being able to make use of transport facilities. Because of gender differences in roles and responsibilities as well as access to resources, women and men have different needs to use transport and face different difficulties in accessing transport. Because of such different access, the consequences for women and men are also different. We have accumulated knowledge on gender problems in transport, but we are still facing women's marginalization in transport planning and development. Why is this so? Why is it that gender and transport is not getting enough attention, unlike gender and agriculture or health, as can be seen in the gender mainstreaming data on the projects of the World Bank and ADB?
Based on a literature review mainly on Western countries, Law (1999: 568) blames the conventional framing of gender and transport:
I suggest that the conventional definition of the subject area with reference to transport geography and urban transportation planning has stimulated certain kinds of research, but has closed off the possibility for other kinds, and so has contributed to a certain theoretical stagnation. Secondly, I suggest an alternative approach that involves reframing issues of gender and transport as part of a larger project, namely, social and cultural geographies of mobility.
In the case of gender and transport in the context of developing countries, the influence of transport geography is reflected in its emphasis on the concept of access and accessibility. In order to move away from the engineer's perspective of transport that focuses on flow and movement, gender and transport scholars have successfully made clear that access and the actual benefit deriving from transport are important for women. However, even with such a focus, our analysis is limited to women's access to transport and does not take into consideration the issue of non-mobility. Although analysis of spatial mobility and women's access to transport are extremely important, they can overshadow the importance of why women are moving/not moving, the benefit of moving/not moving, and issues of women who have the potential to move but are not actually moving spatially. Rigg (2007) notes in his study in Laos the significance of moving but at the same time not moving – the ability to 'stay put'. Following Law (1999), we turn to the concept of mobility to expand the field of gender and transport.
Mobility as capability
David Kronlid (2008) and Priya Uteng (2006) argue that mobility has to be considered as a capability. Capability is an opportunity and 'part of what people are able to do and to be' (Kronlid 2008: 21). Cresswell (2006b: 2) distinguishes movement and mobility, and argues that 'movement can be thought of as abstracted mobility (mobility abstracted from contexts of power)'. That is, considering mobility and not mere movement, we will be able to analyse the power relations that shape and are shaped by the mobility of women and men. Similarly, considering mobility as capability will allow us to look at the constraints and potential of movement and not only the revealed movements, and hence the hidden dynamics behind how mobility is constructed. As Kronlid (2008: 28) notes referring to Lyons (2003), 'access is basically a dimension of revealed mobility', and he goes on to argue that:
From a capability approach point of view, accessibility-based analyses should include analyses of connections between access to travel and capability to travel in the same spirit as mobility functionings are analysed as mobility capabilities in action.
That is, we need to analyse both the movement and the potential to be mobile – what Kaufmann et al. (2004) call 'motility'. Analysing gender and transport from a 'mobility as capability' perspective will allow us to include, in our analysis, wider dimensions of livelihood and differentiation among women. When mobility is conceptualized as capability, it includes in the analysis both mobility and non-mobility, and the enabling environment that allows women to choose whether to be mobile or not. It also makes visible why women and men have to move/do not have to move to get the same benefits, and how the same infrastructure conditions can create a differentiated effect on women's and men's mobility and outcome of mobility, since it can show how gaining 'mobility capabilities are dependent upon gaining other capabilities' (Kronlid, 2008: 27–8). Given the same infrastructure development, women and men demonstrate different mobility patterns because of differences in other capabilities. In this book, Southiseng and Walsh's case (Chapter 11) of Lao traders shows how bridge construction had a gender-differentiated effect because men and women were engaged in different businesses and had different perspectives on business. Wang and Zhao's case (Chapter 7) in China shows how women stopped being mobile, while men continued to migrate, because women's mobility lost its purpose with the entry of wholesalers into the village. In Chapter 6 Kusakabe includes a case in Laos where the mobility outcome varied widely along the same highway, for women, men, and different ethnic groups.
