“Infrastructure that works for women will work for everyone and will promote inclusive cities that work for all who live in them.”
The more equitable and sustainable organization of the society is just like a reverie unless every section of the society participates for the due share both in the privileges and responsibilities. Gender like class and race is a cornerstone of social organization. Had the women not been bestowed with their due share in rampant urbanization, the sustainability would have been futile,and precarious even if it would be achieved.
As consciousness and awareness has been evolving in the sphere of climate change, people are talking more about inequality, injustice and prejudices as the drivers which are raison d’être for a belated and reluctant response towards the eroding environment. The economic, political, social and environmental injustices augment the pace of climate change and at the same time, putting the spoke in the wheel of machinery entrusted to thwart global warming from becoming unable to sustain human life on the planet earth.
Women have always been systematically marginalized, but now as they are getting opportunities to heal the wounds of historical oppression and persecution, leaving no stone unturned. As it was not until the 1970s that the theories germane to feminism and gender entered into the field of geography. The feminist urban geographers are now critically examining at the large scale how different structures and relations of the inequality and injustice are mutually constituted. This exploitation of differences in women’s experience of the cities often requires reconceptualizing great feminist urban theory. As asserted by Nicolas Ginsburger in an article that since the turn of the 20th century, women have existed in the French academic field of geography, and their presence increased dramatically after 1945 and the feminization trend accelerated in the 1960s.
Thereby, we are becoming more and more cognizant of the discriminatory and often oppressed behaviour the women in urban centers have to face while mobilizing. More systematically, the women in the field of geography are studying and accentuating the woes of the urban women while making any trip from origin to destination.
It is imperative especially for the developing countries like Pakistan to incorporate women in all aspects of infrastructure and developmental projects. All such kinds of gaps should be bridged at the utmost priority lest the dreams of sustainable development and environmental friendly growth will remain a chimera.
These discriminatory behaviours can be analysed by studying the journey-to-work patterns. A significantly lower level of mobility exists for working women than for working men as can be found in urban centres. Women have shorter commuting times and distances than men and spend fewer nights away from their main place of abode for work-related reasons. There are a slew of reasons for the gender differences in work-related high mobility, like traditional gender roles and resulting gender-specific division of labour, and a patriarchal power structure.
This is broadly known as the household responsibility hypothesis (HRH). But even due to the recent surge in the female employment rate social gender roles remain largely unaffected. Accordingly, women undertake more household-support and child-serving trips than men. All of these, accompanied by economic disadvantages, show women are still primarily responsible for the domestic labour. This leads to the spatio-temporal constraints for women which in turn limits their urban mobility.
Along the hitherto explained contours, the orientation of society and the rate of gender-related crimes have a huge impact on work-related urban mobility. Resultantly, this restricted mobility reduces the women’s labour market opportunities.
As one study made by Asian Development Bank entitled Women’s Mobility and Labour Supply: Experimental Evidence from Pakistan, quantifies the impact of that urban mobility to the work on both genders and the differential impact of that transport on the female exclusively. According to them,
one quarter of women in Pakistan’s Demographic and Health Surveys work outside the home, another quarter say they are willing to work—suggesting that female labour force participation could double if these women will seek employment. It is enough to shed the light on the importance of full participation of both genders equally for Pakistan amid such an unprecedented economic crisis.
In this pursuit, weeding the physical mobility impediments out as said earlier can increase the chances of social upward mobility. Stigmatization of public transportation, sometimes legitimate while considering the abominable public transportation, harassment and violence in public places and public transport badly need to be ameliorated in order to stretch the commuting time and distance which ultimately incentivize the women to actively participate in economic activities.
After establishing the fact that women have far less commuting time and distance than the men have and then explaining the reasons behind that disparity, and then establishing the importance of women’s full economic participation, it comes naturally to propose the real-time solutions to encourage the women for mobility therefore we can achieve parity.
Intervention of high-quality public transportation which should be environmental and gender-sensitive can be the effective solution. Gender-sensitive policing has also become inevitable for women’s safety. Reserving the seats and spaces for women can encourage the women to use such service with great ease. As the women value such spaces. Better and stable internet availability of the internet can be proved more beneficial in this regard. Inclusive infrastructure which aims to improve women’s safety and provide better public spaces that should be inclusive of women’s needs.
Succinctly, it is imperative especially for the developing countries like Pakistan to incorporate women in all aspects of infrastructure and developmental projects. All such kinds of gaps should be bridged at the utmost priority lest the dreams of sustainable development and environmental friendly growth will remain a chimera.
