Gender, transport and information communication in the developing world.

This seminar provides an overview of the course. It explores the role that information communication technologies can play in compensating for the historical deficiencies of transport structures in the developing world and examines the implications of such compensating changes for the gendered organisation of transport.

During this seminar series, we will pay attention to two key documents which are available on line - we will return to these documents a number of times, although we will visit many other on line documents as well. The first document was prepared for the World Bank to help develop the understanding of how gender, transport and communications infrastructure can interact to improve the recorded poverty profiles of women in the developing world. This document is titled: Gender, social inclusion and rural infrastructure services and is to be found at:

http://www.geocities.com/transport_and_society/ruralinclusion.html

Within this document we can find the rationales as to why a gender, transport and information communication technology is necessary and we can find working examples or demonstrations of gender friendly ICT projects which improve upon traditional gender and transport relationships.

For this seminar to be successful, and for the knowledge base provided on this web site to be fully utilised, it is important that the reader interact directly with the identified readings. These provide a quite substantial shortcut to the state of the art knowledge base but it is a base which is rapidly changing and updating - and this course, and web site, will attempt to keep pace with these changes.

The second document which provides the background reading for this course is a toolkit developed at Cornell and available off Cornell's server which provides on line access to knowledge bases on maternal mortality in Africa. Maternal mortality in Africa is on the increase when maternal mortality rates in the rest of the world are on the decrease: the transport dimension and the ICT dimension are both important to the resolving of this contemporary crisis. The rapid scheduling of emergency obstetric care transport is a critical yet under-researched and under-resourced aspect of African maternal mortality: technology can play a major part in the resolving of this crisis and that is why we have singled it out for this special introduction. Mobile or handy-phone technology may prove to be very relevant for the reduction in maternal mortality. Whilst on this course we will touch upon many other topics the relationship between gender, transport and ICT in the arena of maternal mortality provides perhaps the most striking case of the need for policy rethink in terms of development planning. The document is titled: Maternal mortality: Africa's burden. Toolkit on Gender, transport and maternal mortality and is found at:

http://people.cornell.edu/pages/mg294/maternalmortality.html.

This document is provided as a practical demonstration of how available gender and transport knowledge can be harnessed to the policy process. The construction of tool kits or portals is not rocket science: but these permit the ready integration of fragmented materials for global display. It is a use of new information communication technology in addressing the policy issues and problems of gender and transport - and thus meets our seminar title of itself.

To broaden our reading base and to prepare us for our discussions in the coming seminars, there are two sets of online resources developed by the World Bank that can assist us in our task of reviewing the field of gender, transport and information communication technology in a context where insufficient global institutional resources have been expended to identify, research or resolve the problems of women's time, travel and resource poverty. These are:

http://www-wds.worldbank.org/servlet/WDSContentServer/WDSP/IB/2001/01/12/000094946_00122905320061/Rendered/PDF/multi_page.pdf - Gender and transport: A rationale for action . This document spells out the implications of gender bias in existing transport organisation and the consequences for women's poverty in the developing world. It is a landmark document in terms of establishing the importance of gender and transport relationships in determining patterns of overall gender inequity - and in terms of the importance of overall gender inequity in determining gender bias in transport. It calls for development actions which break the vicious spiral of poor transport weakening women's political entitlements and inadequate political entitlements weakening women's access to quality transport resources.

http://www.worldbank.org/transport/rural_tr/rts_imt.htm - Rural Transport Services and Intermediate Means of Transport This document provides a portal to important resources on gender and equity issues in transport developments. It makes the point that transport developments may increase the wealth gap between men and women and that it is important that infrastructure developments pay attention to such equity issues. It falls short of describing systematic interventions which can address the pervasiveness of gender equity gaps in major infrastructure development.

The seminar course is designed so that each student or reader can move easily between the issues covered. It is designed to give the reader a sense of how much further research and policy thinking on gender, transport and information communication technology is yet required. With these four readings (three of which are major portals to the area), we are equipped to begin our thinking on Gender, transport and information communication in the developing world.

Let us now run through the outline of the other topics that we will touch in some depth.

Our second seminar in this series will focus on the relationship between gender, agriculture and transport and is titled: Gender, transport and information communication technologies: empowering women farmers. This seminar will explore the role that information communication technologies aligned with transport provision can make to women farmers. Women farmers are often disadvantaged in terms of their information and transport opportunities within the developing world: this seminar will explore how new information communication technologies aligned to transport can make to women�s abilities to capture better market prices for their products.

Our third seminar provides a view into a world where women act as a form of transport - it is titled Women as a form of transport, headloading in Africa: organising transport through new information communication technologies . Within Africa women carry more goods on their heads than motorised vehicles carry loads. This seminar explores the ways in which information communication technology aligned with better organised transport provision can alleviate this situation.

Our fourth seminar gives us the space to investigate and more fully explore the relationship between maternal mortality and transport in Africa - it is titled: Maternal mortality and transport: information communication technology and saving womens� lives. As we have already noted, maternal mortality rates in Africa are on the increase whereas they are on the decrease in all other regions of the world. One critical element in this situation is that of the inadequacy of emergency obstetric transport. This seminar explores the extent to which information communication technologies aligned with improved transport provision can play a part in the amelioration of this situation.

Our fifth seminar takes us to a topic adjacent to that of maternal mortality, it is the issue of the provision of health treatment facilities along transport corridors. This seminar is titled: Health risks and transport corridors: information communication technology for health care. The pattern of AIDS infection in the developing world is strongly related to the location of transport corridors with truckers in these corridors playing a major role in the transmission of infection. This seminar explores new transport based approaches to the reduction of AIDS infection piloted by agencies such as the World Bank.

Our sixth seminar moves from the area of gender, transport and health to that of the economic empowerment of women through transport aligned with tele-technologies. The seminar is titled: Marketing womens� products: fair trade, international transport and local control through information communication technology New information communication technologies create new marketing opportunities for women in developing countries. These technologies create new transport needs, patterns and demand. The technologies also provide remote communities with the ability to monitor the price and location of their products. This seminar will explore how new logistic developments in the developed world can be harnessed to the needs of women in the developing world.

Our seventh seminar recognises that the access patterns of women to new information communication technology and the ways in which this access interacts with their travel and transport patterns and needs are likely to be very different as between the first and third worlds. The seminar is titled: Public access to public technologies: community communication centres and gendered access to information. Whereas access to communication technologies has become a normal feature of household operation in the developed world, in the developing world access is frequently organised through community facilities and community use of individual facilities. This seminar explores the operation of community communication centres in a number of developing world locations and the implications of these arrangements for women�s access to travel and to information.

Our eighth seminar in this series focuses on the relationship between gender, transport and education. Access or distance barriers to girls' education are often amplified by the role that girls play in the performance of household tasks. This seminar looks at the ways in which new information communication technologies can be utilised in reducing access distances for female children and, indeed, for adult females. The seminar is titled: Gender, transport and information communication technology: the opportunity for new educational arrangements. This seminar explores the new patterns of educational arrangements made possible by new technologies and their consequences for patterns of educational travel.

Our ninth seminar builds upon the understanding of the importance of education and access to communications for women's empowerment and the implications of such empowerment for the full use by women of equitable travel and transport resources. It is titled: Gender, transport and information communication technology: the political implications of shrinking communication distance. This seminar explores the political consequences of new information communication technologies in a context where women�s physical mobility has been historically constrained. Our tenth seminar explores the policy responses and technical developments in respect of the issue of gender equity in the context of transport and information communication technology. Gender audits, gender checklists and the millennium development goals: tools for gender transport equity . This seminar explores the new institutional tools used by governments and development agencies in developing policies and patterns of gender equity in travel and in access to information.

Our final seminar will be a wrap up session where we pull together the understandings that we have and conclusions that we have reached in our investigation of the available research and policy literature. The seminar materials are available on the web with the purpose of developing and increasing the literature in this field. It would be rewarding to see other web sites on these topics flourish.

Click here to return to the seminar course outline.

e-mail at [email protected]