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news
Rebekah Bergh with Glasgow's Finnieston Crane in the background (picture credit Sustrans Scotland).jpgSustrans: Urgent need for more women to be involved in transport planning and delivery
Sustrans saws that there is an urgent need for women to be better represented in transport planning and delivery in the UK to encourage more of them to undertake active travel.
The call to action follows a new report published by the sustainable transport charity ahead of Thursday’s International Women’s Day.
The sustainable transport charity’s report, entitled Are We There Yet?, examined the habits and choices when it comes to travel of almost 2,000 women in Glasgow.
The results were combined with a literature review of existing research on the subject in Scotland, the UK and Europe.
Among the findings of the report were that women typically undertake shorter urban journeys than men do, use different modes of transport and are more likely to undertake what it terms ‘trip chaining’.
The latter refers to multi-stop journeys, explained by having to balance issues such as childcare, travelling to and from work, and undertaking household tasks such as shopping.
The report also found that while improving physical and mental health was a factor that encouraged some women to engage in active travel, barriers to it included safety, convenience and appearance.
It said that in Scotland’s public sector, transport has the lowest percentage of women in senior positions, accounting for 6.25 per cent of people heading up transport bodies.
Across the UK, the report said that women made up just 22 per cent – less than a quarter – of employees.
And while figures across the UK generally show that the number of cycling trips made by is generally one third that of men, in Glasgow the gender imbalance was even starker at 2 per cent of women versus 16 per cent of men choosing a bike as a mode of transport.
The research was led by Suzanne Motherwell, who is Sustrans Scotland’s Evaluation Manager.
She said: “Our research has shown that there are a number of women-specific barriers such as lack of time, complex schedules and fears of personal safety, which stop them from travelling actively more often.
“If we are to get more people walking and cycling, it is essential that we address the inequalities that exist in transport – at every level – from users right through to planning and policy making.
“By designing and building infrastructure that caters for both genders’ needs, we can help ensure the gap between the levels of women and men cycling is closed, and importantly improve the everyday cycling levels in our cities and towns.”
The research was welcomed by not-for-profit campaign group Women In Transport and by the Scottish feminist organisation, Engender.
Women in Transport’s president, Katie Hulland, said: “Less than one quarter of UK transport workers are women, so we are massively under-represented in the planning and delivery of transport policy, infrastructure and services.
“We agree a more gender balanced workforce would help the transport sector better address women’s needs as customers and service users.
“As the leading professional network for women in transport, we’re working with the transport industry, parliament, government and beyond, to address women’s under-representation and promote a diverse and inclusive transport workforce.”
Emma Ritch, executive director of Engender, said: “It is good to see Sustrans are highlighting the links between transport policy and women’s equality, and we hope to see women’s different experience of travel integrated into all of their future work.
“Scotland’s travel systems are not designed around the needs of women, who tend to make shorter and more frequent journeys and are more concerned about their personal safety.
“This obliviousness is perhaps unsurprising given that women are massively underrepresented in transport bodies: only 6.25 per cent of their chief officers are women. Making active travel work for women makes it work better for all.”
The report includes a case study of 25-year-old student Rebekah Bergh, originally from Sweden but who has lived in Glasgow for four years and mainly uses a bike to get around the city.
She said that affected her choice of clothes, and also highlighted the intimidation she sometimes feels while riding her bike:
I know that appearance and the way you look is a big issue for some women and from time to time it does bother me.
It means that I don’t tend to wear skirts or dresses, and if it’s raining for example, I will choose not to wear makeup. However, I don’t tend to cycle particularly fast and I have a cap that I wear to protect my hair and eye make-up, so I don’t feel too messy when I arrive at university.
Drivers don’t tend to think about what it is like for people on bikes going about the city and I’m not very good at being assertive when I’m on my bike on the road. I am not always confident that I know if I am allowed in certain spaces.
So when I feel that cars are getting too close or that they are getting impatient because I am cycling slowly, I don’t have the confidence to mark my space and will often find myself cycling very close to the pavement instead of keeping my distance from it which can be dangerous.
I know if I was more assertive on my bike and cycled faster they would respect my space, but then that means that I am more likely to end up hot and bothered when I arrive at my destination.
Having cycle routes and networks designed with women in mind would make a huge difference to my journey every day. To have paths which are safer and less intimidating to use would make the world of difference and I hope it would encourage more women to travel by bike when possible.
Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.
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18 comments
The difference in the perception of what is safe has already been touched upon here.
I agree that most of the traffic that you do get is the school run made by mostly mums.
I really believe that if they can deem it safe for them to take their kids on bikes it would be a step change on how we think about cycling.
Cycling can be normalised.
Even on this site there is barely really anything that non mamils can relate to.
I do think that inexperienced and non-cycling people having an input would be hugely beneficial if we are to make cycling the default choice for local travel. I was so impressed in The Netherlands to see people cycling in their ordinary gear (even saw one woman cycling in an evening dress!) because cycling is ordinary. UK cycling seems to be about lycra and sport and improvement. Even Breeze exhorts women to train, get faster, go further, as if you should somehow want to be good at cycling. I think people should just cycle. Badly if necessary. But always safely. I am frankly rubbish at cycling and could never go out with a club, but I love tootling about on my bike and am quite happy to tootle for several hundred miles with the right traffic light / traffic free route and company. I do avoid traffic because it is unpleasant, I hate breathing in fumes and it's not much fun having to guard your back all the time, so I'm really not interested in becoming 'more confident' riding in traffic because I don't want to.
This is the big difference between European cycle infrastructure and UK "bit of white paint" infrastructure. We need to encourage as many people as possible to get cycling if only to improve their fitness, let alone the clean air benefits of having less motons.
However, I'd rather have long-time cyclists involved in the nitty-gritty of junction priorities etc as getting the right design is critical for ensuring safety. Personally, I hate the way that UK cycle infrastructure cedes priority at almost every road junction.
It'll be something for the podium girls to do when they're all
sackedredeployed.I've noticed that. Aside from the usual chimps in work vans, it seems to be young girls who are the worst for close passing. They seem to think that so long as they don't actually kill you, they can pass as close as they like.
That's because most of them drive small cars and think they are harmless if they hit you.
I could go into a long rant about small car drivers a cyclist, pedestrian and motorist but I won't, and just simply say most of them seem to have spatial awareness problems.
Oh and if you don't want the chimps in vans to hit or close pass you get a flowing blonde wig. However then you will get male BMW and Audi drivers trying to kill you instead.
I think the male/female split is irrelevant with designing infrastructure. Good infrastructure is not gender specific and shouldn't involve any level of fear.
I think the problem is that UK cycling infrastructure is designed by people with no real-world knowledge of cycling. Also, they ignore the feedback from people that do have real-world experience of cycling.
What we need to be doing is copying successful cycle infrastructure designs from the rest of Europe (or the world, but I don't know of good cycle infrastructure outside of Europe).
Can't wait for gender specific roads. No more doing 15mph because there's snow in the fields.
It's good to see some evidence of the fallacy that "MAMILs are the only real cyclists"
Whilst we like to distance ourselves from the 'chav-on-a-bike' demographic, subscribing to the lycra clad warrior pigeon-hole does neglect a large potential sector of the population, and damaging to our own cause.
I'm mildy surprised that it's taken this long for some kind of report to surface, when you consider the stereotypical cyclist of various nations and the correlation with the wider attitude to cycle safety in those countries. In the UK, Aus, US etc, "cyclist" conjours images of wannabe racers in aero gear, lightweight bikes and battling with traffic to stay out of the gutter and go fast enough to keep up with traffic. The mentality is that we choose to do it so we have to fight to validate our claim to ride. Contrast that with NL, Scandinavian cities, and many African nations and 'cyclist' prompts thoughts of men, women and children pootling about on sit-up-and-begs/ step throughs/ buffalo bikes/ commuters, happily going about their day because riding is the easiest option. When not owning a car isn't stigmatised, and suitable infrastructure exists, people will want to ride, even in places as wet as the UK, even in places colder than the UK.
So yes, more female cyclist transport planners are required. More cyclist transport planners are required. A seismic shift in in transport planning is required and diversity in the panning teams can only be the start. Diversity of people bring diversity of experience, and only with a wide range of views, knowledge and experience can designs be produced that consider pros and cons from all sides.
1950/60s Coventry was an experiment in what happens when cars are prioritised over people. It was a failure, it still is a failure, and yet elements of the design are still copied verbatim in every UK city.
Well, we don't want to hold up *real* traffic, do we?
What is a cycle route/network designed with women in mind, and how is it different (*is* it different?) to any other network designed for "civilians" - of any gender (ie. not serious roadies or any gender)? Surely, to have paths which are safer and less intimidating to use would make the world of difference and would encourage more people generally to travel by bike when possible.
Less bumpy maybe?
I would rather that we had cyclists, of any gender, planning our transport infrastructure (and not useless Sustrans).
Having said that, the UK has an abysmally low fraction of female cyclists, and these are over-represented in fatal incidents. Other countries, with proper cycling infrastructure and cultures, don't have the same problem.
We could teach more women to ride, how does a woman in a conference room or drawing a road help women RIDERs?
"the womens" is like the only justification nowadays for anything, it's this century's "think of the children"
Well, for a start it would provide a different perspective on what road infrastructure should look like. We have the cyclists (in terms of absolute numbers and demographic representativeness) that we deserve in the UK, given our infrastructure and road culture. I would suggest not looking at the cyclists we have, but the ones we don't - i.e. the people who don't cycle (yet).
Here's a hypothesis. We know from robust surveys that the biggest deterrant to cycling in the UK is fear of danger from motorised traffic. We also know that this affects women more than men (see British Social Attitudes Survey). So women are more likely to design infrastructure that deals with this fear than men. Without women, the infrastructure may not adequately account for the fact that people don't cycle because they are scared to do so.
This is exatly what I was failing to articulate.
I keep getting told that women and men are the same. so how would this help women in particular? Aren't women fearless like in the movies?
110lb women can't throw Dwayne Johnson through a wall? Next me you'll be telling me Santa isn't real!
People that don't want to cycle because of dangerous drivers are the same people that putting people off cycling, women included. I take my lad to school on the bike sometimes and most of the overly aggressive driving around school is women. These people will be the same people who don't want their kids to cycle, once again because of people like them.