More about
us
Fair Mobility will improve mobility frameworks for women and gender minorities in small towns and rural-urban areas, where accessibility issues are a major hindrance. The main objective of the project is to increase women’s empowerment: legitimacy, sense of safety and pleasure, when moving around the city.
The project will combine mobility access in poorly endowed areas and the empowerment issues of women and gender-discriminated people, by questioning the implementation of technical and technocratic soft modes thought by and for men. We want to provide an example of how local processes for inclusive cities could be achieved in the short term, by implementing co-creation processes to improve sustainable mobility options and the accessibility of public living areas.
Still from video footage taken by Edwin Husic
Still from video footage taken by Edwin Husic
“People feel safe in communities that consist of diverse groups” Bahanur Nasya, The Unseen Impact of Patriarchal Mobility
This ambitious goal will be achieved by implementing innovative tools co-developed with people concerned and local stakeholders. This approach is based on the use of tried-and-tested methods that will be adapted and improved according to the local contexts
A gender inclusive methodology, allowing for target users to participate and co-construct urban and mobility planning, is the innovative approach adopted by the project.
Fair Mobility will propose a framework on principles to co-construct urban design in peri-urban and rural areas. Led by an international and multidisciplinary consortium, recommendations will be based on in-depth learnings, tested in two case studies, a peri-urban area, Creil – France, and a rural area, Ebensee – Austria.
Through this co-construction process, the aim is to change the way urban planning and mobility are conceptualized, taking everyone’s needs into account so as to reduce gender, age and ethnic inequalities.
Greater access to public space by a wide diversity of people and social groups can evolve into a healthy ecosystem that can renew itself and readjust to future challenges, including climate change.
Context and
challenges
The evolution of household and parental models, labour market developments, technological advancements, new work forms, increased female workforce participation, and population aging are diversifying mobility patterns. This necessitates transport policies that address sustainability while taking into consideration an inclusive approach.
Studies reveal that gender differences in travel patterns are largely due to labour market and family role divisions, impacting women’s employment conditions, income levels, and mobility needs. Women typically travel shorter distances, use public transportation more, engage in non-work travel outside rush hours, make more multi-stop trips, run household errands, and escort others (usually children or elderly dependents). Women also tend to be safer drivers than men. Although some differences may diminish as gender roles evolve, others may persist.
Still from Wonderland archive
Sustainable mobility policies often neglect gender-related concerns. Public transport services frequently fail to meet the needs of women, gender minorities, refugees, disabled people, the elderly, and children, limiting their access to education, leisure, work, socialization, and professional consultations, thereby restricting their freedom and empowerment. Additionally, challenges related to the comfort, safety, and design of public spaces hinder walking and cycling, affecting men, women, and gender minorities differently. The lack of gender-differentiated statistics hampers understanding gender differences in travel purposes, frequencies, distances, and mobility-related issues in accessing services and employment. These mobility challenges are tied to the European Union’s goals of gender equality and climate change mitigation, making them essential to address in the implementation of 15-minute cities and 30-minute regions.
The European Commission acknowledges gender equality as a fundamental right, employing a dual approach to achieve it: integrating a gender perspective into public policy design, implementation, and evaluation (gender mainstreaming) and eliminating, preventing, or remedying gender inequalities. However, introducing a gender perspective into mobility policies remains challenging, as evidenced by persistent inequalities in mobility access and experiences. According to Eurobarometer surveys (2020), women are less likely to own a car (49% vs. 59% of men) and more likely to use public transport (31% vs. 24% of men). Safety issues disproportionately affect women’s mobility, whether from the risk of
harassment or accidents (Gonzáles-Sánchez et al., 2018). Women are also more involved in “mobility of care,” related to caregiving and household tasks essential for daily life (Sanchez de Madariaga, 2013). The Covid-19 crisis highlighted mobility practice inequalities, showing that women, racialized groups, and low-paid workers were overrepresented among those most exposed to the virus and most impacted by lockdowns.
An EIB Climate Survey (2022) found that “In Europe, women are more
likely than men to adopt sustainable travel. They also make 80% of travel decisions. Research suggests that if men travelled as women do today, emissions would be reduced by 18%.” The European Green Deal aims to reduce transport-related greenhouse gas emissions by 90% by 2050, requiring ambitious and proactive measures to promote “sustainable, affordable, and fair mobility.” This challenge is particularly crucial in suburban and rural areas, where equitable access to mobility and amenities and car dependence are major issues often overlooked. According to CO2 reduction plans, these regions need to cut mobility emissions by half, necessitating significant changes in areas where half of the emissions are caused by mobility.
fair mobility tackles
these challenges
Additionally, challenges associated with comfort, safety, and the layout of public spaces impede the development of walking and cycling, and this affects men, women and gender minorities differently. These mobility challenges are connected to two core goals of the European Union, namely gender equality and climate change mitigation, thus turning into core issues to be tackled during the implementation of 15 minute-cities and 30 minute-regions.
Gender equality is recognized as a fundamental right by the European Commission, which developed a dual approach towards equality: integrating systematically gender perspective into the design, implementation, evaluation of public policies (gender mainstreaming) and eliminate, prevent or remedy gender inequalities. Introducing gender perspective into mobility policies still remains a challenge nowadays, as underlined by the remaining inequalities in mobility access and experiences between men and women. According to the last Eurobarometer surveys (2020), women are less likely to own a car (49% of women, as opposed to 59% of men) and more likely to use public transport (31% of women, as opposed to 24% of men). Safety problems also disproportionately affect women’s mobility, whether it be the risk of experiencing harassment or to be the victim of an accident….
Safety problems also disproportionately affect women’s mobility, whether it be the risk of experiencing harassment or to be the victim of an accident. Women also more often assume “mobility of care”, that is the travel associated with those caring and home related tasks needed for the reproduction of life.
The Covid-19 crisis highlighted inequalities in mobility practices, showing that women, racialized groups and groups occupying low-paid jobs were overrepresented among the most exposed to the virus and the most impacted by the lockdown.
Additionally, according to an EIB Climate Survey (2022), “In Europe, women are more likely than men to adopt sustainable travel. They also make 80% of travel decisions. Research suggests that if men would begin travelling as women do today, emissions would be reduced by 18%”.
The European Green Deal includes a target to reduce transport-related greenhouse gas emissions by 90% by 2050 which cannot be achieved without ambitious and proactive measures to promote “sustainable, affordable and fair mobility”. This challenge is key in suburban and rural areas, where the problems of equitable access to mobility, amenities and car dependence are major and still little taken into account. At the same time, according to the CO2 reduction plans, such regions need to cut mobility emissions often by half, which requires significant challenge and change for people in regions, where half of the emissions are caused by mobility. On the basis of these findings, the main objective of Fair Mobility is to provide guidelines to integrate gender perspectives into mobility offers and policies, especially for the suburban and rural municipalities, and to co construct and experiment tools which remedy gender inequalities, prevent and combat discrimination due to gender in daily mobility practices. Based on the preceding remarks, the project establishes women and gender minorities as the main target group. Urban and regional planning plays a key role in determining the inclusiveness of urban areas, as it provides key policy instruments and design solutions, which can solve or at least soften these issues. Yet the basis for urban planning are standardised spatial needs. The measurements, based on homogeneous society, aim to be good enough for most people but are failing to meet the real needs of all of the users, especially disadvantaged, marginalised and/or discriminated groups.
Still from Creil Workshop
Our
methodology
The main conceptual approach of Fair Mobility is to translate scientific knowledge from mostly social sciences into practice, while considering technological possibilities in the field of mobility. Thus, Fair Mobility is a scientific project with an orientation towards innovation. The methodology behind the project is based on the following four phases:
Fair mobility will be employing these methods:
Our analysis will include research and documentation review of the core topics such as geographical location, demographic trends such as higher life expectancy, the labour market, family and house related activities (including non-work travels, household errands, escorting other passengers, etc.), employment conditions of citizens, income levels, and case studies with a focus on policies and design solutions adopted in other cities.
Qualitative analysis will include field research and interviews with women, gender minorities and other discriminated groups that use local public spaces on how safe it’s perceived and what their transportation options are (and their perspectives towards the options.)
The analysis will include an in-depth review of the project HEAL implemented by the municipality of Bad Birnbach (Germany).
We will specifically try and identify gender disaggregated data whenever available as a base for our research.
The information to come out of our pilot cases is of vital importance to the project and our methodology.
Through a cross-comparison, we’ll look into what elements are replicable, regardless of context…
The available transportation options, the key elements of planning and execution of mobility in the regions, and the perception of locals towards mobility options will be compared. The findings will help guide us towards creating the toolbox and guidelines.
The collection will serve as a foundation for gender-sensitive approach in urban and transportation/mobility planning. For instance: Based on new studies, women walk more (25.8%, compared to 22.0% of journeys) and tend to use more public transportation than men, therefore equal mobility opportunities could be attained by optimising foot movement through the city, providing convenient access to the surroundings and the public transportation network. In addition, developing functional and well-integrated soft mobility measures, such as the pedestrian and cyclist network, will be one of the key suggestions and aspects of the project.. The findings will be compiled into a Catalogue of Solutions that will be designed in a clear, simple, understandable way and contain clear recommendations for action.
The focus of the project lies on peri-urban or rural areas, which are less studied and are sometimes invisible, thus lacking coordinated public policy interventions. However, these places also have strong potential, whether in terms of solidarity links’ dynamism and civil society initiatives, the proximity of natural amenities and the plurality of relationships that these territories maintain with other territorial scales.
Therefore, two pilot areas have been chosen in peri-urban areas: Ebensee is part of the Salzkammergut region and has a population of almost 8.000 residents, making it a small-sized town in comparison to Creil, a middle-sized city in the Metropolitan area of Paris (approx. 30.000 residents, but if adding the commuting aspect and taking into consideration the agglomeration that the town is part of, the numbers may go up to 88.000). This approach covers a diversity of territorial contexts, thus providing a heterogeneous distribution of testing areas.
We will implement a feminist intersectional approach and standpoint feminism, which aims at producing situated knowledge based on the analysis of the experiences of women and minority groups. This approach takes into account the consubstantiality of social power relations linked to gender, social class and racialization and how multiple forms of domination and oppression affect (albeit differently) the lives of all women. Following the recommendations of the European Gender Equality Strategy, we will use intersectionality as a cross-cutting principle.
This de-centralising process is a source of conceptual innovations, the constitution of new situated knowledge and a solid critical reflection, thus providing the conditions of replicability for the solutions we build. More specifically, the consortium of researchers and experts will confront the potential and the limits of the methods used and identify the ideological, legal and regulatory limits to the implementation of more inclusive measures, which vary according to national and local contexts.
Building on
knowledge
Fair Mobility builds on the consortium’s extensive background in interdisciplinary work on urban governance, urban planning, mobility and transport systems, gender vs urban planning issues, precariousness, social innovation and inclusion, and community participation studies, with a novel research approach based on participatory mixed methods. This methodology combines advanced statistical analysis with rich lived experience data, document analysis, semi-structured interviews, mapping and participatory action research not only to identify the ways women and gender minorities experience mobility inequalities, but also support empowerment through collective deliberation and co-production of experimental policies and practices.
Still from Wonderland archive
Innovative
Approach
Fair mobility will intersect mobility access in poorly endowed or remote areas with women and gender discriminated people inequalities issues. Questioning the technical and technocratic implementation of mobilities and access, historically thought by and for men, Fair Mobility wants to provide an example of how local urban design process towards inclusive cities could be achieved in the short term. In particular by implementing a co-creation process to improve accessible and sustainable mobility options, towards more inclusive communities/neighborhoods. The objective is to create a framework in which municipalities will orient themselves when developing soft and hard infrastructure projects in order to improve their inclusiveness and sustainability.