Week 10: 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.

The key readings are:

The first reading provides us with evidence of the adoption of gender audits, and equally importantly, participatory gender audits by governments and international agencies within the f�eld of development: it tells us that "in September 2004, Sri Lanka became the first country to conduct a participatory gender audit for the ILO�s constituents, by the ILO Bureau for Gender Equality." Whilst this Sri Lankan gender audit is not specificall dedicated to the gender and transport sector, it can be seen that if it is systematically applied it will have implications for this sector. The use of audits, guidelines and checklists on gender and transport has already begun and provides a baseline or benchmarking of data for further policy development in this area.

The second reading provides an example of policy advice on gender and transport given in Africa under the auspices of a World Bank project. It draws attention to the importance of participatory processes in the field of gender and transport.

We have argued in the body of this course that access to transport and equally important access to communication is a fundamental dimension of women's empowerment. For the millennium development goals to be met specific attention has to be paid to issues of gender, transport and communication.

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Margaret Grieco, D.Phil.(Oxon.)
Professor of Transport and Society
Napier University
Edinburgh
and
Maria Goeppert Mayer Visiting Professor
Department of Mechanical Engineering under the auspices of the Centre for Gender Studies
Technical University of Braunschweig
Germany

e-mail at [email protected]

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