Research on Women's Issues in Transportation, Volume 1: Conference Overview and Plenary Papers (2006)

Below is the uncorrected machine-read text of this chapter, intended to provide our own search engines and external engines with highly rich, chapter-representative searchable text of each book. Because it is UNCORRECTED material, please consider the following text as a useful but insufficient proxy for the authoritative book pages.

5Keynote Address Ann Frye, Department for Transport, United Kingdom Samuel Johnson, the famous 18th-century Englishwriter, once said: “A woman preaching is like a dogon its hind legs. It is not done well but you are sur- prised to find it done at all.” So I suppose we should all be congratulating ourselves on the extent of our modest achievements and recognize how far short we fall of the achievements of men. However, Dr. Johnson was prone to comment unfa- vorably on all sorts of things. On the subject of Ameri- cans, for example, he said: “They are like a race of convicts and ought to be thankful for anything we allow them short of hanging.” So maybe it’s better to consign Dr. Johnson and his free-thinking views to the history books and talk instead about why we are all here in Chicago. I wanted to talk in particular about why the British government is supporting this event and why we have come all this way to share experiences and ideas. Our starting point is a simple one. Transport is a world designed, built, and operated predominantly by men and used predominantly by women. As a result we have • Transport systems and pedestrian areas that women are frightened to use; • Vehicles designed with seats and seat belts that are not appropriate for a woman’s body mass; • Transport planning decisions that do not reflect the different work–life balance that many women have, for example, juggling child care with running a home, keep- ing a full-time job, and caring for aging parents; and • Fare structures and job requirements that work against those who need to work flexibly or on a part- time basis. The world is slowly changing. Increasingly we have • More women in senior positions in the transport industries, changing attitudes and perspectives and chal- lenging old ways of working; • More research that has identified gender issues; and • A clearer focus on understanding people’s needs as a starting point for developing and delivering transport services. One of the initiatives we took a few years back in the United Kingdom to try to raise awareness and under- standing of these issues was to develop the gender audit and checklist. This is a simple working tool intended for those at the local level in planning and delivering trans- port services and the pedestrian environment. The audit highlights the gender differences in a transport context, and the checklist suggests systematic and practical ways to address them. Another important new UK development that will, I believe, be helpful in refocusing our transport planning on the diverse needs of the communities and individu- als who make up our population is accessibility plan- ning. This development represents a major shift in the way that local administrations work and consider needs.

Essentially, all local authorities in England bid for resources on a 5-year rolling basis to fund the capital costs of transport infrastructure and the provision of non- commercial local transport. As a basis for that funding they have to produce a local transport plan setting out their priorities and explaining how they will spend the money. Accessibility planning, which will come into oper- ation next year, adds a new dimension to that process by requiring a thorough and systematic analysis of the prob- lems experienced by those most in need (i.e., people with low income, reliant on public transport, etc.) and of the impact that transport has on those people’s ability to access key services: employment, education, health care, and food shops. In other words, transport planners must be focused on people, their needs and expectations. They will be assessed against their performance in tackling social exclusion on the basis of this analysis. This is just a very brief summary of some of the key factors that we believe are important in helping to estab- lish a better balance in the transport world so that women’s voices are heard and women’s needs are recog- nized and met. We believe that this conference—and the people who have come together to contribute to it—is an important step toward that goal. I did not have the good fortune to know Pat Waller, to whom this conference is dedicated, but I have heard a great deal about her and I would like to close with a quote from the writer Anatole France that sums up what I know of her approach to life: “To accomplish great things we must not only act, but also dream, not only plan, but also believe.” 6 RESEARCH ON WOMEN’S ISSUES IN TRANSPORTATION