Mainstreaming Women in Rural Travel and Transport in Kenya:

Abstract

The provision of rural transport infrastructure and services is inadequate in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). As a result, social and economic activities in rural areas take place at high cost in terms of the time and effort involved and the opportunity cost of labor not being available for more productive use. As studies in SSA continually show, no single group suffers more from this situation than the women and girls of SSA. In- deed, females are the beast of burden without whom movement in rural areas would ground virtually to halt. Yet, women have been inadequately involved in the identification, design, implementation and monitoring of needed interventions to address transport needs. Accounting for this situation are many factors includ- ing: a perception by the transport profession that planning and project design is gender–neutral i.e. that the methods and approaches used by the profession are such that both men and women are equitably impacted upon by planned interventions; that gender inequalities should be dealt with as part of ‘social’ policy rather than transport; and, that women’s time has less value. The reality however is that women suffer more from lack of transport than men, particularly in the rural areas, arising from the greater complexity of their basic activities which involve commercial, social production and community management activities. Moreover, as concerns shift from mere provision of means of development to the impact of such pro- vision, questions have increasingly been raised as to the validity of these assumptions