Brazilian Women Walkability Index: Participatory Construction of a Nationwide Index to Promote Women Pedestrian Policy in a Developing Country

Commonly disregarded by most of the studies within urban research, the pedestrian mobility and the gender differences are brought together in this paper as central topics to discuss transport policy in a developing country.Developed through the participatory eliciting of weights (N = 581 women) and applied in 50 municipalities throughout Brazil, the Brazilian Women Walkability Index (BWWI) represented the perception of local women on four features of the urban environment: sidewalks, public lighting, security, and length of daily trips. This favored the construction of a linear regression model to search for the validation of the obtained BWWI, which was performed through the inclusion of widespread and consolidated indicators as predictors: the Human Development Index (HDI) and the Gini index. Besides yielding a satisfactory goodness-of-fit within public policies (adjusted R² = 0.498), the retrieved coefficients seem appropriate: a city with greater human development and lower inequality may result in a more attractive urban environment for women.The presented study pursues the incorporation of the perspective of gender in mobility studies as an essential element to understand the constraints to the occupation of the public spaces by the simple fact of not being a man. To do this, the perspective of pedestrian women is greatly emphasized, considering their requirements and idiosyncrasies as they walk in the city.

• Supplemental Notes:
  • This paper was sponsored by TRB committee ABE70 Standing Committee on Women's Issues in Transportation.
• Authors:
  • Souza, Adriana Cristina S
  • Humberto, Mateus
  • Bittencourt, Lua
• Conference:
  • Transportation Research Board 97th Annual Meeting
  • Location: Washington DC, United States
  • Date: 2018-1-7 to 2018-1-11
• Date: 2018

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Digital/other
• Features: Figures; References; Tables;
• Pagination: 6p

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Developing countries; Females; Indexes (Information management); Linear regression analysis; Mobility; Pedestrians; Policy; Urban areas; Walkability
• Geographic Terms: Brazil
• Subject Areas: Pedestrians and Bicyclists; Planning and Forecasting; Policy; Society;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01656852
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: 18-02374
• Files: TRIS, TRB, ATRI
• Created Date: Jan 22 2018 10:49AM