Why women in developing countries should have Bicycles.
Mobility, especially to workplaces and markets, for the women and girls who make-up 70% of the world’s poor, is often hampered by distance, cost, carrying capacity, time and availability. Many of these women are limited to walking and in many cases headloading an average of 20kgs to transport goods. Rural African and Asian women will walk on average 6 kilometres each day for water, food and fuel collection, which prevents them from working or going to school and puts them at direct risk of sexual assault, whereas a bicycle is three times faster than walking (World Bank, 1996) and can carry up to seven times more than one woman headloading.
Women are often culturally restricted from operating or using motorised transportation. They are further constrained by often having children or other dependents with them, therefore less likely to get a ride. Bicycles significantly relieve these physical and transportation impediemnts, as well as being non-polluting, lower in cost, easier to customise for specific purposes and are generally easier to repair and maintain than other motorised forms of transport.
If indeed “one of the best ways to help the poor is to improve non-motorized transport” (World Bank, 1996 pg 73), then a bicycle is an obvious and logical strategy to help minimize the impacts of poverty. Investment in women has massive knock-on effects considering that for each woman who is able to break out of the poverty cycle, four other people are taken with her as a result. Such an outcome has an immediate positive impact on families and communities.
However, as Mozer (2015) identifies, ‘to the limited extent that bicycles have been introduced into the structure of transportation in Africa, women generally have been excluded from access to the benefits’ . This is an area of particular interest for me and an element which I will be investigating in some detail in subsequent posts.
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All facts attributed to Walk in her Shoes (2015) website unless otherwise specified. As accessed at http://www.walkinhershoes.org.au/facts.
World Bank Policy Review Paper (1996) Sustainable Transport. Viewed on Wed 4th Nov, 2015 as accessed at http://www.worldbank.org/transport/transportresults/documents/sustain-transp-1996.pdf