Networked Research Case Study

Balancing the Load

The Balancing the Load programme researched gender issues in transport (1998-1999). IFRTD brought together people working with groups of poor women in different countries in Asia and Africa, and encouraged them to analyse their own context/experiences from the perspective of gender and mobility. The 31 researchers included a team from SEWA and the SEWA bank in Ahmedebad India, an architect from Calcutta, two activists (one with links to a remote village in Kenya and the other to tribal communities in India), staff of international NGOs in Sudan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, the co-ordinator of the Village Travel and Transport Programme in Tanzania, a government official and a transport safety professional from Uganda, a transport planner from the Centre for Scientific Research in South Africa as well as independent consultants and academics from South Africa, Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Bangladesh, Nepal, and the UK. The researchers worked together in two regional groups to agree a common framework and timetable for the research, and then returned to discuss the key issues that they presented to two regional seminars.

The programme raised the profile of gender issues in the rural transport sector, provided a platform for southern voices, and had some more immediate practical impacts on poor people. Following the seminars the UN Economic commission for Africa initiated a series of gender and transport studies using the researchers from the programme. The World Bank's Sub Saharan Africa Transport Program's Rural Travel and Transport Program (RTTP) initiated the Gender and Rural Transport Initiative (GRTI) to support practical pilot projects in Sub Saharan Africa, and several of the Balancing the Load case studies were used by the World Bank for a gender and transport awareness raising programme. Researchers shared their findings with local newsletters and journals.

The research gave publicity to the isolation of the Nkone community in Kenya and strengthened their ability to lobby for assistance. Today the Nkone Bridge (previously a connectivity bottleneck) has been built, facilitating access, decreasing the burden on women, and improving transport safety for children.

Conceptually the research has advanced certain ideas. In Bangladesh researchers argued that 'mobility needs to be seen as a human right for women', a concept that another gender and transport researcher in Senegal is interested in pursuing. The World Bank's gender and transport thematic group, in pushing for more research on how gender can be mainstreamed into transport sector projects, has used a networked research methodology to draw upon expertise in 9 countries.