Introduction to Week 4discussion
Topic 4 theme: "Gendered Poverty: The role of Transport in Women's Economic Empowerment"
Dear All
Welcome to the fourth and last week of Gatnet's Gender and Transport
Discussion. I am Mamoeketsi Ntho from Lesotho, I am your moderator for
this week, the topic we will be looking at follows three topics of
interest that have a direct relationship on issues of empowerment.
policy gaps, ICT,access e.c.t. all are intrinsically related to
empowerment ( or lack of it).
Preamble:
Men and women have different transport needs, hence different travel
partterns, this is due to the roles they perform within their
societies. Women's triple roles (reproductive,productive,community) in
most societies demand more time from them and this calls for
prioritizing in allocation of time. However this prioritization is
mostly done in a way that marginalizes women's own wellbeing. It has
been observed that women engage in multiple purpose trips( trip
chaining) which require their time and labour power. In as much as they
can try to save time they also increase their work load.
Because of the disproportionate commitments to household tasks between
men and women, the latter are time poor. This dimension of poverty is
rarely mentioned when we talk about poverty; however some recent
studies on transport have highlighted the extent to which time poverty
plays itself out on the daily basis of families. Examples of such
studies by Jeff Turner and Margaret Grieco can be found at the following
http://www.geocities.com/margaret_grieco/womenont/time.html
http://www.geocities.com/transport_research/spconf2.htm
http://www.geocities.com/margaret_grieco/elecedu/asynchro.html
( we will appreciate more references from any one)
Labour has been assumed to be an asset in abundance for poor women, but
in practice women's time poverty puts pressure on this labour so that
it
has not benefited them. Their reproductive, caring and productive roles
within the domestic sphere restrict their mobility. If mobility suggests
ease and frequency of travel, we can safely conclude that poor women's
mobility is restricted by social constructions of their roles, and if
that is the case we can as well concluded that this can change. Mobility
is critical in addressing poverty hence the need to revisit our
conceptualization of transport. Efforts to enhance mobilty need to be
informed by lived experiences of poor women and men.
This week's topic concludes the discussion by examining
issues related
to women's mobility and the resultant difficulties of transferring their
labour and time from the household to the market. It asks the
fundamental question:
How can transport alleviate poverty and thus
play a part in women's economic empowerment?
Some of the questions I would like us to think about and address are:
1. What is gendered time poverty? How does it manifest itself?
2. What are factors that create time poverty in our different contexts?
3. How does gender time poverty hinder women's achievement of economic
and gender equity?
4. How has gendered time poverty beend addressed in different countries?
5. What steps must be taken to address this problem and thus reduse
women' time poverty ?
Let's have a fruitful debate!
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