Understanding women’s travel needs after COVID
Drawing lessons from user research on women’s transport behaviours in Ireland (2020) to anticipate the challenges public transportation will face post-COVID.
Transport is not gender-neutral. Women, and mothers, in particular, have different mobility needs and constraints, which are often underrepresented in transport planning and design. In her book Invisible Women, Caroline Criado Perez writes of the gender data gap that has plagued transport design, along with the design of other everyday items and social institutions. “One of the most important things to say about the gender data gap is that it is not generally malicious, or even deliberate. Quite the opposite. It is simply the product of a way of thinking that has been around for millennia and is, therefore, a kind of not thinking. A double not thinking, even: men go without saying, and women don’t get said at all. Because when we say human, on the whole, we mean man.”
Perez echoes the truth observed decades earlier by Simone de Beauvoir, “Representation of the world, like the world itself, is the work of men; they describe it from their own point of view, which they confuse with the absolute truth.”
Last winter, in an attempt to do my small bit in filling that gender data gap, I travelled to Ireland to lead ethnographic research on women’s transport needs. We visited women in their homes and observed how they travelled in cars, on bikes and buses. Qualitative research was followed up with a 1000-person quant survey. I’m happy to report the report has now been published by Transport Infrastructure Ireland and includes five design challenges that will be used for planning inclusive, sustainable modal shifts. The report addressed some of the following themes:
Modes of transport: How can sustainable transport modes compete with the car?
Family roles: How can an understanding of the family unit influence sustainable mode choices?
Being safe: How can transport feel safe for women?
Being inclusive: How can transport consider the diverse needs and contexts of all women?
Driving change: How can we accelerate sustainable behavioural change?
Reflections, one Coronavirus year later
Looking at photos of people out and about might feel strange now that many of us are stuck at home in lockdown. But, with working vaccines slowly being distributed, the end of the pandemic is in sight. It’s time to think about what happens next. When it comes to transport design, how do we not just resume business as usual, but carry on, and with haste, the larger battle against climate change? Rereading the report, several findings worried me of the behaviour challenges public transportation might face after COVID. I would like to share these here, along with some thoughts at the end on the broader role of research and representation in delivering inclusive design.
How COVID may change behaviours and perceptions of public transport
(Note: the report findings are not necessarily generalisable beyond women and Ireland. I also won’t be citing granular data here — please refer to the report for evidence and breakdowns. I highly recommend a full read!).
Transport behaviour is sticky, driven largely by habit. In Ireland, we learnt that climate change awareness does not necessarily translate to choosing public transport over cars. Rather, habits formed during pivotal moments in life — such as during childhood, or when women become mothers, often become ingrained as individual and family routines.
Restricted by COVID lockdown, many of us wish for a return to ‘normality’. But, by the time enough people have been vaccinated for the economy to reopen fully, two years may have passed. During that time, life has moved on, new habits created. For some children, two years may be their entire memory. For new mums like me, priorities are completely different. We can’t assume that people will snap back to their previous public transport routine, but must actively encourage the creation of healthy new habits, with a particular focus on children and new families.
The car is perceived as the more ‘reliable’ choice: Reliability and speed are particularly important for mums who are usually responsible for accompanying young children to school, or for taking care of the elderly, in addition to juggling work commute and other household responsibilities. Mobility of care is a primary reason why many Irish women become “locked into” car dependency: even if they don’t use it daily, the car is still seen as something you need as a family “just in case”.
One consequence of COVID is that public transportation in many places has operated at reduced capacity, becoming slower and less reliable for those that still depend on it. According to McKinsey, a third of consumers value constant access to a private vehicle more than before COVID-19, esp. amongst younger consumers. I’ve never bothered to learn to drive myself, and my husband works in renewable energy, but with a small child requiring frequent hospital visits, even we wondered whether it’s time to lease a car.
Winning back trust in the reliability of public transportation will be key after COVID. Even though many transit agencies now face worrying cash constraints, we must resist the temptation to operate reduced service frequency after COVID.
A shock to people’s sense of safety can have a long term impact: Aside from reliability, safety is a top concern for many women in Ireland, shaping their choice of travel modes, particularly at night or when alone. As has long been the case, society places the primary responsibility on a woman to keep herself safe. As a result, some women develop strategies like avoiding travelling at night, carrying car keys in their hands as a makeshift weapon (see picture) or feigning listening to music while walking to avoid catcalls.
Luckily, in Ireland, unlike some other parts of the world, violent and unsafe incidents do not happen to most women every day. However, the impact of such trauma is still felt everyday by many women we met. We found that a single incident from many years ago can have a lasting impact on a woman’s sense of safety and daily choices. COVID is definitely a shocking event forcing each one of us to reassess our personal sense of safety in relation to our travelling needs. I worry that the fear and anxiety we currently experience will linger in our collective trauma.
When women recount traumatic incidents they have experienced when travelling, the lack of support from bystanders contributes to feelings of anger, helplessness, and vulnerability. Even when others are around, their lack of empathy and support can make women feel even more isolated and unsafe. Now that crowds are seen as a source of health danger, will we be even less willing to help others in public, less willing to ask for help?
To convince people to return to public transportation, creating real and psychological safety from violence and health risks will be key. This will entail not just physical design infrastructure but creating cultures of conduct for passengers and communities.
COVID has made public transportation appear both less safe and less reliable, two key factors driving transportation choice. People’s public transportation habit may not resume automatically after COVID, requiring conscious design effort to win back trust by creating psychological safety and reliability. Reaching out to those whose lives have changed the most during COVID — children and new parents including — will be key.
Final thoughts on representation and inclusive design
I’ve been a researcher and design strategist for nearly a decade now, and in that time, have represented hundreds of research respondents in different projects. I take pride in being socially conscious — advocating for social justice, diversity, and inclusion in design.
Yet, despite co-authoring this hundred-page report on the challenges women (and mothers) face using public transportation, I couldn’t mentally prepare myself for the helplessness and hopelessness I would feel standing alone with a buggy for the first time at the top of an escalator at Seven Sisters Station. It was midday, the tube fairly empty: only a handful of masked passengers had hurried passed. My own mask surely obscured the terror I felt as my mind raced through hundreds of scenarios of how to balance Liem and the pram on the escalator — would I topple over, killing my two-month-old firstborn? Or, had I already given him COVID by exposing him to strangers? Since then, I have yet to brave a return to any form of public transportation.
poor neighbourhood, Amanda endured routine verbal harassment on public transport. My own experiences with racial-based harassment created a strong feeling of connection.
While I’ve always believed in the importance of inclusive design, when I was able-bodied and childless, inclusivity was an abstract concept I needed to remind myself of frequently and rationally. From now on, the helplessness of not being able to get down the escalators alone will always stay with me. It’s a lens I will bring to every project, and will hopefully make me a better designer, a better advocate. Similarly, my various memories of being shouted at “konichiwa” or “ching chong” when riding the bus made me feel a particularly strong connection to our respondent Amanda (name changed), a black woman who encountered racism as a youth using public transportation in a predominantly white neighbourhood.
Want it or not, our backgrounds influence our worldview and our design philosophies.
“Whiteness and maleness are silent precisely because they do not need to be vocalized. Whiteness and maleness are implicit. They are unquestioned. They are the default. And this reality is inescapable for anyone whose identity does not go without saying, for anyone whose needs and perspective are routinely forgotten. For anyone who is used to jarring up against a world that has not been designed around them.”
― Caroline Criado Perez, Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men
I’m convinced that doing research and engagement with diverse communities, while critical, is not enough. For the points to stick, and make their way into design decisions, diversity needs to also be reflected within the decision-makers in the room, so that the “non-default” needs and vulnerabilities can be vocalised. A famous example: Sheryl Sandberg was likely not the first worker at Google to be pregnant, but it was only when the then-COO was carrying her first child did anyone make the case for closer pregnancy parking for expectant mothers.
During this last year of COVID lockdowns, I can imagine that many of us have experienced new or more extreme vulnerabilities first hand — be they related to mental health, finances, mobility, loneliness. It’s one thing to be aware of these social issues, and another to truly experience them. I hope these magnified challenges, when they pass, will leave behind positive change, giving us added empathy for others, added courage to admit our own vulnerabilities, and added humility to invite diverse voices onto the design table and make space for “non-default” needs and ideas to be vocalised.
