DEVELOPMENT-SRI LANKA: Asian Rural Women Deprived of Transport

By Feizal Samath Reprint | | Print |

Feizal Samath

MARAWILA, Sri Lanka, Jul 6 1999 (IPS) - Many women in rural Asia believe that their poor access to transport is only part of their generally deprived lives, new reserach shows.

An Indian case study on the transportation problems of women shows that women are not even aware of transportation as a ‘separate aspect’ of their lives, although their lives may revolve around it.

“Concepts such as ‘distance travelled’ have little meaning for women, who tend to think in terms of ‘time spent’ on tasks as having more relevance to their daily lives,” said the study which focused on the north Indian city of Ahmedabad.

The ignorance aspect figured prominently in most case studies that were presented at a two-day international conference, last week, in the coastal town of Marawila, 55 km northwest of Colombo, to discuss gender inequalities in transport.

The meeting was organised by the London-based International Forum for Rural Development and Development (IFRTD) which, last year, commissioned case studies in Asia on problems women faced in transportation.

Researchers from Sri Lanka, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and the Philippines presented 12 Asian case studies while researchers and other professionals from Cambodia, Britain and the United States took part in the discussions.

IFRTD is an international network that aims to overcome the physical, economic and social isolation of the rural poor in developing countries.

Its ‘Balancing the Load’ research project in Asia and Africa was funded by Britain’s Department for International Development. (DfID). The African study would be discussed at a regional workshop in South Africa next month.

Common problems faced by rural women include inability to own transport, even basic ones like bicycles, reluctance to discuss their problems with male community groups and male policy makers, lack of awareness of rights and lack of appropriate intervention.

For instance, in the Filipino island of Jandayan, men are owners of boats, motorcycles and bicycles which they use for personal mobility and leisure.

A study here in gender transport showed that despite the active role of women in fishing, women were never encouraged to run boats and even have a fear of the sea because they are not taught to swim.

A striking feature in Bangladesh is the cultural barrier that affects women, who face a rigid division of labour in the composition of the work done by men and women.

Rural men spend 5.97 hours daily on work while rural women spend 7.5 hours, the bulk of which is on subsistence activities and housework.

The gender division of labour on the one hand induced traditional cultural restrictions on women’s mobility and on the other, reinforced restrictions, according to Bangladeshi researchers.

They said there was a strict code on when and for what reasons women left their homes, though women were slowly breaking these barriers. With regard to modes of transport, the research team said that only men used bicycles.

The Asian studies, while providing common issues and problems, also raised contrasting situations like the Nepali experience where it was stated that rural women were reluctant to discuss their problems with male researchers and administrators.

Bidhan Rajbhandari, senior national programme officer of the Nepali-based Swiss Development Corporation, said they did get over that problem by the formation of a group of professional women whose services were utilised to talk to shy, rural women.

“This core group was used to bring these women into the open and make them confident enough to discuss their problems, even with men,” he said.

Conference participants prepared a set of recommendations and national policy guidelines on gender and rural transport which are to be passed on to community groups, transport practitioners and policy makers.

Among these recommendations were that transport interventions should respond directly to the needs of women, raise awareness among women on their right to mobility and that all development initiatives should take into account gender and transport.

It was also decided that communities should be adequately informed about the different types of transport and, in this context, identify culturally appropriate designs of transport modes, taking into consideration gender and sensitive locations.

It was also argued that women should be given a more prominent role in the maintenance of roads as some studies showed they had assumed much more responsible roles than the men in looking after roads.

The use of bicycles by women featured in a Nepali study on gender and transport. Researcher Ganesh Ghamiri reported that in one village where an earth track had been upgraded to motorable standards and another earth track built by the locals, transport burdens had reduced and many women were using bicycles.

The study also noted that there were changes in the responsibilities between men and women. Men were using bicycles to collect fuelwood, indicating a gender shift in responsibilities at household level. Women, particularly younger women, were using bicycles to carry small loads.

Women carrying heavy loads on their heads to the market or home in the absence of other modes of transport, was a common occurence in most Asian studies.

A study of the transport problems in the east Indian city of Calcutta and its suburbs found that rural women carried heavy loads and walked between one to three hours to the local railway station, to board a train to the city.

Since there were limited opportunities in selling vegetables and other goods in their villages, these women travelled distances of up to 160 km a day to sell their produce in Calcutta.