This past week I attended the Rose Cafe with GRF Seema in which she spoke about her research in urban/transportation planning as it relates to gender in the developing world. Her field is not one which I know much about, so I wasn’t quite sure what to expect going into the talk. Nevertheless, I was pleasantly surprised by how relevant I found it to my own interests. I am personally very passionate about feminism and social justice. Hearing about the impact of gender-related issues on a domain that I hadn’t thought of previously really made me consider more the ways in which our society is designed around certain gender roles and objectives.

In the talk, she really focussed on the differing needs of men and women based on their roles within society. At first, this struck me the wrong way, as I thought that catering to these gender roles via infrastructure may serve to reaffirm them. However, it makes sense that adapting the infrastructure to allow women to leave the home could be a step in actually moving away from these gender roles over time. Building on this, Seema also spoke about solutions for violence against women on public transport, as well as some of the other challenges faced by women when it comes to transportation, specifically the creation of female-only transit options. Our discussion about these solutions was quite diverse, and it was really interesting to hear the multiple perspectives.

Overall, I really enjoyed GRF Seema’s talk, and I look forward to hearing more about the GRF’s research next semester.