Aspects of Gender Mobility: Disaggregating complexities of gender in active transportation research

Keywords: transportation, gender
Abstract Type: Virtual Paper Abstract

Abstract

Active transportation planning often focuses on gender-neutral bodies, planning around universal physical accessibility and design standards. This paper focuses on considering the varied ways that gender identity, role, and presentation impact comfort and experience of streets in Boston. Current research on daily travel through urban streetscapes focuses on physical accessibility, fear and safety concerns, and time constraints. While prior research has addressed gender and gendered experiences of travel, it has focused on mobility gaps by gender role and gendered caretaking and travel behavior. However, little existing research focuses on the ways that specific street-level design and streetscape organization create spaces that are inclusive and traversable by people regardless of gender identity. This project seeks to redefine inclusion through the experiences of people who actually use these spaces. We intentionally sought out different voices to generate a broader understanding of the relationship between infrastructure and gender inclusion, focusing on people who regularly travel on two major streets in Boston, Massachusetts. We specifically focus on the results from a survey questionnaire about gender and mobility experiences, disaggregating survey responses by different gender variables to consider how different facets of gender inform different experiences of streetscapes.