Women’s Personal Safety, Participation and Employment Linkage in Urban Public Transport: Final Report

The research study is aimed at examining gender inclusiveness in urban public transport with particular reference to women’s personal safety and security; their participation in planning, decision making and job creation in the urban public transport. The study employed both primary and secondary data using mixed quantitative and qualitative research methods. For the primary data in the process of identifying the target population for the study, women aged 18 and above (stratified into female students, working women and housewife) who used public transport at least once a day were considered. The qualitative survey was based on an ethnographic approach, namely Key Informant Interview (KII), In-depth interviews (IDI), Participant observation (PO) and Focus group discussion (FDG). Exploratory and confirmatory data analysis trajectories were applied for quantitative data while the qualitative data was analysed using thematic phenomenological methods.

The findings reveal that public transport service provision in Mekelle city remains largely gender insensitive. Women’s safety and security is often compromised due mainly to cultural norms and values that reflect in their daily trips. Harassments in the form of verbal and psychological abuse become rampant especially inside Mini-bus taxi. Women in the city are reported to have been very well represented at a political level, but their role in regulatory and leadership positions in the sector is constrained; almost all the respondents never participated in any transport planning process. The practice on the ground demonstrates poor functional integration in addressing the issues of inclusiveness and women’s empowerment in the sector. Despite modest progress on legal protection, women’s overall satisfaction with this aspect still remains at the lowest possible level.

To ensure safe and secure public transportation for women in the city continuous awareness campaigns are needed to bring women’s transport-related rights to the attention of the general public. State legal machineries have to carefully and promptly address women’s harassment cases with earnest in timely and forceful manner zeal and high impacts. Building the capacity of women and the community in general will help to bring behavioural change especially for the service providers (minibus conductors and drivers) who are the main perpetrators of the harassment on public transport.