I attended this café at least in part just because I wanted to know what a talk about “Gender and Transportation” could possibly be about.  What could that possibly even mean?  Gender and what kind of car you drive?  It turns out that it was about something rather more interesting than that – transportation availability and movement patterns of people in a city.  This is related to gender because patterns and availability are very different between men and women, especially places like India where traditional gender roles are stricter.

The pattern differences are definitely something that I can recognize in how the families I interacted with as child worked.  My dad always drove straight out to Denver to work in the morning, and then straight back at the end of the day.  Linear patterns associated with work.  My mom worked as well, but she also drove me to school and music lessons, bought food, went to the bank, came home to let the dog out, etc.  Much more complex patterns of travel due to being responsible for the children, pets, and household matters.  Some of my earliest memories are of driving around town with my mom, but it wasn’t until this talk that I thought to look for patterns in how she moved.

Both of my parents, however, had cars.  This is often not the case in the developing world, which leads to inequality in who had gets to use the car – generally the man of the household.  Women in places like India instead must often build a daily transportation system that involves buses, trains, walking, etc.  A car, for them, would represent ultimate freedom of movement.  This was an eye-opening realization for me, because I personally tend to view a car as a restriction.  It’s a responsibility.  It’s a cost.  You have to buy it, buy gas, pay to park it everywhere, pay for upkeep and repairs, and then also spend time on all of those things.  For me, true independence would be freedom of movement without having to lug around a very expensive 2-ton hunk of metal every time I want to go to buy groceries.  One of my life goals is to eventually live somewhere where I don’t need a car – somewhere where I can get around using a sensible and reliable system of subways and trains and the occasional Uber.  I want to do away with my car because I know I can live in a place that has a reliable and safe system of public transport, but in a place that doesn’t have such a system a car is infinitely desirable over public methods.

Overall the most significant thing that I got out of this café was a shift in how I think about cities.  I’ve spent my entire life interacting with my city’s parks, roads, buses, rec-centers, etc.  Yet somehow, I’ve always thought of a city as a place one lives, and it has never before occurred to me to think of a city as something that one “uses”.  A city is not just a “where” it’s also a “what”.  A city is not just organically grown, but also in many ways deliberately designed and carefully constructed.  It’s fascinating to imagine a city not just as a place with a lot of buildings, but as a set of tools that people use and the pathways through which people flow to reach them.

In addition, I’ve never really conceptualized transportation as a major responsibility of government before.  I suspect this is at least in part due to the fact that unlike in the developing world, everyone I know always had a private car.  Still though, I took the public bus to school every single day for four years and somehow it never really sank in that “public” meant “local-government run”.  This might not change how I interact with TCAT too much, but it does change my perspective on local government as compared to the state and federal government.

In politically fraught times like 2017, something I hear over and over again is that if you want to be politically active you have to start with participating in and interacting with your local government.  Yet, I’ve never really seen the point in doing so because what does a city government even do, especially in a small city like my hometown?  Plant trees in parks?  Fill pot-holes?  Things that must be done, sure, but how could those be in any way relevant to the divisive national issues that I actually care about?  This café has caused me think harder about what important functions city government has that I might not really have properly connected to it before.  Local government has responsibilities with regard to transportation and housing availability, environmental issues in transportation and regulation of public spaces, public education, water and power access, and regulating local presences of behemoth firms like telecoms.  I really ought to start paying attention to my county election ballots.

GRF Seema talked about urban development and transportation in India. Her focus is on how gender and transportation interact, affecting the lives of citizens in India and how they get around. In India, there is not enough public transportation provided to get everyone where they need to go, so informal modes began to pop up. This includes personal cars driving people around. When this happens, the modes of transportation get very crowded and dangerous to ride at times.

We also talked about sexual harassment women experience on public transport. The dilemma of the group was whether or not quick bandaid files would help ward off sexual abuse. For example, how effective would it be to offer women their own transport cars on things like busses and subways? Once they leave the car, the women would be subject to the sexual harassment all the same. Would these precautions have an adverse affect, making it unsafe for women to go on cars that aren’t gender exclusive?

I think that we need both these quick fixes as well as long term policy to stave off sexual harassment. One student also brought up education: teaching men why it is wrong and how their action affect women would be a great step.

Though it was hard to follow Seema’s talk at the beginning, the connection between gender and transport was established quickly. Seema’s talk was very interesting becauseI found a lot of parallels between her talk about India and the United States. I both places women have to be wary of sexual harassment even though it is usually men who perpetrate it. However, I think the public transportation system in the US is a little bit more efficient than in India.

This Rose Cafe was led by graduate student, Seema, who is currently a GRF living in the Rose main house. I decided to go to this Rose House because one, I have always been interested in transportation systems in third world countries as infrastructure is necessary for a strong economy (I am an AEM major), and two, because I desperately needed one more event to complete the scholars requirement!!

The talk taught me that transport systems are born and developed to suit the needs of the public. For instance, roads are extremely congested in India and travel is difficult in cars and vehicles. So, the auto, a small three-wheel, which is in no way safe or sound, was built as a mode of transportation. Based on the level of development of a country and the socio economic/cultural differences between genders, male and female transportation needs are extremely different. For instance, in India (especially 50 years ago when there were fewer women in the workforce), men have a transport routine of going from home to work, usually in the city, regularly; whereas, women have a transportation routine of traveling from home to the market and to school to pick up students, and this pattern usually resides within the area of their residence.

Sexual harassment in public transportation is a pressing issue that women in India face on a day to day basis. Some initiatives to combat these instances have been the introduction of the pink auto and special carts on trains. The pink auto is basically an auto for women driven by women. This minimizes the risk of abuse and sexual harassment that auto drivers engage in with female passengers. Being the passenger in the backseat puts the victim in a helpless position as they are robbed of any power to fight the auto driver who has control of the wheel, and thus, the destination. Governments are also allocating the first cart on at train to be an all-female cart which further prevents abusers from violating women. I personally believe that pink autos and carts on a train are a great way to address the problem temporarily. Women are safe in the cart they are safe in the specific auto, but once they get out of that space, they are in danger of the culture of harassment that exists in India. The topic of reverse motivation came up–having the first cart being all-female will send the message that women who are not in the first cart OK harassers. While this may be true to some extent, I think the fact that a separate cart exists itself is a message to the public about the realities of sexual harassment and that it’s not ok.

Definitely, there needs to be more involvement in educating the public about the wrongs of harassment in India.

At last week’s Rose Café, GRF Seema Singh shared her work on the study of gender and mobility, with an emphasis on the context of the developing world. Prior to attending, I was unfamiliar with the topic, so I’m glad that I had the opportunity to learn about the process of planning urban transport and the primary challenges of crafting policies in this department. The discussion was thought-provoking, and there were interesting comments and ideas going around the room.

We mainly discussed the situation of transportation in India. As cities develop and expand, transport grows extremely overcrowded and streets become clogged and difficult to navigate. Competition between private and public transportation ensues, and problems such as noise pollution are created.

The overcrowding of transportation also has a large impact on women, partly due to their “assigned” positions in society. Generally, men are expected to work and earn money, while women take care of the house and the family. Thus, women often travel to multiple points throughout the day, for example, dropping children off at school and buying groceries, compared to simply traveling to the workplace and back. Additionally, when families own a car, it will be available to the men more often then it will be available to the women.

Sexual harassment is a large concern for women traveling throughout urban areas. Reserved spaces for women only, such as designated train cars or pink vehicles piloted by women, address safety concerns and have inspired more women to travel using city transportation. However, these safe spaces only present a short-term solution to a more complicated problem.

Fortunately, I had the opportunity to attend house fellow Seema Singh’s talk on gender and mobility. In full disclosure, I entered this discussion with apprehensions. This was because I thought I knew most of the issues regarding the disadvantage women are at when compared to their mail counterparts. In short, I could not have been more wrong. I learned so much throughout this talk. The one aspect of the talk I enjoyed the most is when we had an open discussion about possible solutions to the issue of sexual assault on public transportation. We learned how some women in India have vehicles and other means of transportation meant exclusively for women. This was a part of the social movement to educate all and end sexual assault. However, one person in the discussion feared/inquired that if a women is not on one of these all women means of transportations and is assaulted then wouldn’t people essentially blame the victim for knowingly not riding an all women option when it was available to her? I never thought about this argument, but I can see how some will use it in the legal field. The class seemed to agree that awareness and education is the best long-term solution. I am happy I attended this rose cafe. I only knew about the divide between men and women in regards to the United States. Prior to this talk, I never thought about the divide and how worse it may be in lesser developed countries such as India. This discussion was a mind opener and provided me with much to reflect on.

I went to a Rose Cafe this week where we talked about gender and transportation. I hadn’t really thought about how gender influences the transportation choices you make, but talking about it during the cafe made me realize that it really does. For example, I don’t use Uber/ other ride-sharing apps, and I don’t accept rides from people until I really know them because of safety reasons. It seems like every couple weeks you hear about women getting sexually harassed or assaulted on these ride sharing apps. I am lucky enough that I don’t need to use those services, but there are many women who have to use services like these to get to work, or go grocery shopping for example. That’s why we as a society have to come up with a way to prevent sexual harassment/assault from happening on public transportation. One thing that we talked about was that in India, there are some areas of the train/subway that are reserved for women only. But that is only a band-aid solution, it doesn’t target the root of the problem. The only thing that can is education and progress so that societal norms change. Society is very resistant to change, so more and more people have to speak up and convey that sexual harassment and assault do happen, and that that is not okay. We have already seen that recently with the #MeToo campaign, and also in the film industry. But I do think that these “band-aid” solutions are good until society changes. They allow women to leave their homes and go out and work/ care for their family. This gives them more independence. This independence will lead to demands for equality, which will eventually end up changing societal norms. This independence also gives women the power to leave abusive situations and still be able to provide for themselves. In short, I believe that these “band-aid” solutions allow women to be more independent, which leads to society changing bit by bit. I hope that one way everyone can ride public transportation/ use ride-sharing apps without the fear of sexual harassment/ assault.