Women and Transport

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the Gender Audit Project

Introduction

Women's transport needs are in general different from men’s. This is because, for example, women are:

• more likely to be caring for children
• more likely to be in part-time employment and to work locally
• less likely to have a car or to be able to drive
• more likely to travel outside peak hours
• and more likely to shop.

These differences affect women’s transport needs profoundly. For example, women are:

• more likely to walk or to use public transport
• more likely to travel on local and non-radial routes (i.e. not on routes in and out of town centres)
• more likely to have children and shopping with them.

At the same time, public transport is usually designed to cater for unencumbered people travelling on their own at peak times on radial routes.

The Gender Audit is aiming to assist policy-makers, planners and transport providers to change that design - in these and other ways - so that travelling is better for everyone.

Methodology

There are several overlapping stages to our work:

• a literature search
• mapping women’s journeys
• focus groups
• on-line discussion groups
• seminars for local authorities and transport providers
• the Gender Audit Report and Checklist

There is updated information on this site about all of these issues.

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© 2002