Planning and policy processes in Gender and Diversity Mainstreaming
The third workshop on Gendering Smart Mobility in the Nordic Region was held in Stockholm, on the 17th-18th of September 2018. The focus of the workshop was to analyze how gender and gender equality has been taking into account in policy, practice and research concerning transport. In short, the workshop addressed gender, intersectionality and the smart mobility paradigm with focus on strategies, implementations and policy. It was organised around a number of panel presentations from research, policy and planning practice; i.e. the participants (researchers, policymakers and stakeholders) brought examples from their work.
The workshop consisted of three keynote speakers: Professor Joachim Scheiner, Professor Ulf Mellström and Daniel Svanfelt from the City of Malmö, as well as three panels. The latter addressing different takes on the intersection between gender, transport and policy processes. In total, seven experts contributed with research papers and their professional view upon life-cycle stages and generation; urban environment and safety, gendered norms in sustainable transport policy and planning; gender equality in transport infrastructure planning, Privileged infrastructures and privileged users; as well as new projects fxTransport Innovation Gender Observatory – TInnGO. A new Horizon2020project. All together perspectives on modelling and activity based methods to map and analyze mobility trajectories
The workshop was introduced by Head of the Coordination for Gender Research, Hilda Rømer Christensen.
Gendering Smart Mobility in the Nordic Region
Gender is one aspect of diversity which often interacts with other aspect. Previous studies have pointed to transport and mobility as producing gendered stereotypes, and how notions of men and masculinity are being linked with speed and mobility; by contrast women and femininity are seen as synonymous with immobility and aligned with home and domesticity. Nordic research has shown that planning processes are vital and that inequalities in family and workplace can be best addressed in the early stages of planning which includes in the transport planning process. Furthermore, awareness has grown that transport planning and research should extend their focus to domains or (sub)systems that interact with transport, directly or indirectly e.g. the demographic and household formation process, changing lifestyles, work conditions, consumptions and leisure patterns – which largely determine the demand for transport. Current mobility patterns reflect structural changes in society. The Nordic countries have much in common and a high-level commitment to both sustainability and gender equality which might enable more equality and more innovation also in transport.
When looking at the interfacing field of transport, gender and sustainability from a research and policy perspective, it turns out to be a vital but also neglected issue. Moreover it is lacking knowledge production of gender equality in family, workplace, health and education both at the Nordic and international levels. The project taps into these challenges and aims at strengthening and proliferating Nordic Co-operation and models, and to contribute to a paradigmshift in overall transport planning and practices. Departing from the prevailing idea of smart, green and integrated transport the overall objective of this project is to contribute to a new Nordic model in transport, mobility and gender equality.
Keynote Speakers
Professor Joachim Scheiner from the Faculty of Spatial Planning, Department of Transport Planning, Technische Universität, Dortmund presented the first keynote under the title: Gender, Travel and the Life course. Thoughts about recent research. He explained how research about the links between gender and travel dates back to the late 1970s. Since then, it has grown into a huge field with various sub-fields, theoretical hypotheses and methodological approaches. In recent years the field has been linked to research about travel over the life course that has become popular under the term mobility biographies. Arguably, life courses have multiple links to gender as well as to travel. Scheiners presentation introduced basic ideas and approaches of the research field, and exemplified the links between gender, travel and the life course using some of the author's empirical work. It also critically acclaims the field that often appears somewhat contested and characterised by misconceptions. The second keynote speaker was Professor Ulf Mellström from Centre for Gender Studies, Karlstad University. He presented a paper called Cyborgic entanglements of technology and masculinity: a posthumanist ‘blindgänger’ in transport studies and beyond?focussing on different entanglements of technology and masculinity. Mellström showed entanglements and disentanglements of different discourses and practices around how masculinity has been constructed around, intimacy, technology and cyborgisation. Historically, this points in two different directions, destructiveness and emancipatory hopes of transcendence through cyborgisation. Pointing to that cyborgs are thus political technologies, and it could be argued that a history of masculinity as well as the future of masculinity, in a western context and beyond, can be understood in relation to cyborgisation and intimacy with technological artefacts. Thirdly, strategy officer Daniel Svanfelt from the City of Malmö presented af keynote speach about Implementation of Gender Equality and Social Sustainability in the Urban Planning. By showing historical and contemporary examples and cases from the city of Malmö, on how social sustainability, including gender equality and equity issues, can be managed in regular physical urban planning processes, Daniel Svanfelt addressed and discussed how to make social sustainability count to make a real difference in urban planning and urban design is in fact a big and complex challenge.
The project Gendering Smart Mobility in the Nordic Region is a collaboration between the Coordination for Gender Research at the University of Copenhagen, the Swedish National Road and Transport Research Institute and the Institute of Transport Economics Norwegian Centre for Transport Research. Funded by The joint committee for Nordic Research Councils in the Humanities and Social Sciences.
Read more about the project: https://koensforskning.soc.ku.dk/projekter/gendering_smart_mobilities/