Travails of Traveling: How Does Gender Influence Public Transport Choices?

Join the Women’s Leadership and Resource Center and Gender and Women’s Studies for a virtual presentation of work in progress by UIC Anthropology PhD student Nirupama Jayaraman exploring the relationship between gendered mobility and access to public transportation:

Building on scholarship in both gender and urban anthropology, my project will explore the relationship between gender and mobility, within the routinely used public transport bus network, considered public space within this project, in the South Indian Tier II city of Madurai. To explore the relation between gendered usage and the ensuing inequality of access to transport infrastructure in a small city, my project will ask the following questions: What impact does the spatial context of smaller cities have on public transport as a gendered experience? How does people’s gender (perceived and self-identified) play a role in their usage of public transport? Who are the external (state) actors that influence, through gender-focused policies, everyday transport decisions and how?

Findings from this project will help contribute to ethnographic understandings of gendered mobility, examine spaces of consumption within transportation, and augment interdisciplinary interventions to existing mobilities discourses on cities of the Global South across anthropology, gender studies, and urban planning.

The presentation will be followed by a response from Dr. Tarini Bedi, associate professor of anthropology, and Sanjeev Vidyarthi, professor and director of the Master of City Design Program, urban planning and policy, as well as audience Q&A.

Register to receive the Zoom link.

CART live captioning will be provided. Please send any questions or access requests to wlrc@uic.edu.

WLRC’s Feminisms Lunch Lectures series offers faculty, staff, students, visiting scholars, and activists an opportunity to present their projects, ideas, and works-in-progress on a wide range of topics and engage participants in lively and provocative discussion. For 2021 and 2022, WLRC is partnering with the UIC Gender and Women’s Studies department to feature UIC graduate students and others whose current research, creative, or community projects engage feminist movements and scholarship.