Walking and Gender Equity: Insights from Santiago Chile

Sustainable transport is often defined according to energy efficiency and environmental impacts, but with global approval during UN Habitat (Quito, October 2016) a set of Sustainable Development Goals have become the focus for human development until 2030, underlining the relevance of health, equity, and other social issues. These goals raise the challenge of achieving significant progress toward “transport justice” in diverse societies and contexts. While exclusion occurs for diverse reasons, discrimination based on the cultural roles traditionally assigned to women seems almost universal. Moreover, in most countries it affects more than half of the population. This makes gender an area of particular interest and potential insight for considering equity within sustainability. In many developing countries, the data available suggests that women account for a large, sometimes disproportionate fraction of those who depend on walking as their main transport mode. What does this mean for equity and sustainability? Using data from Metropolitan Santiago to ground a conceptual exploration, this paper explores the equity implications of women and walking. Key findings underline the importance of considering non-work trip purposes and achieving better land use combinations to accommodate care-oriented trips. They also indicate that women account for a disproportionately high number of walking trips, a situation that can be interpreted as “greater sustainability” in terms of energy use and emissions, but may reflects significant inequalities in access. Environmental and economic sustainability gains may be achieved at a high social cost, unless specific measures are taken.

• Supplemental Notes:
  • This paper was sponsored by TRB committee ANF10 Standing Committee on Pedestrians. Alternate title: Walking and Gender Equity: Insights from Santiago, Chile
• Authors:
  • Sagaris, Lake
  • Tiznado-Aitken, Ignacio
• 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: 21p

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Equity; Gender; Health; Land use; Nonmotorized transportation; Recreational trips; Social factors; Sustainable transportation; Trip purpose; Walking
• Uncontrolled Terms: Non-work trips
• Geographic Terms: Santiago (Chile)
• Subject Areas: Pedestrians and Bicyclists; Planning and Forecasting; Society;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01657525
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: 18-05195
• Files: TRIS, TRB, ATRI
• Created Date: Jan 24 2018 9:25AM