In October 2009 the Transportation Research Board (TRB) sponsored the 4th International Conference on Women’s Issues in Transportation.

The two volume set of the Proceedings of this Conference (all of whose papers were peer-reviewed in accord with National Academy of Sciences standards) is now available in PDF for free on the TRB website.

Many of the papers cover important transportation, land use, community design, and planning issues from the perspective of women and their children and their aging parents. A special feature of the 4th Conference was a focus on international research, and comparative travel patterns, particularly in the developing world.

Among the papers in the two volumes are six papers commissioned specifically for the Conference:

● Marty Wachs, “Women’s Travel Issues: Creating Knowledge, Improving Policy, and Making Change”

● Ananya Roy, “Gender, Poverty, and Transportation in the Developing World”

● Sandi Rosenbloom and Maryvonne Plessis-Fraisard, “Women’s Travel in Developed and Developing Countries: Two Versions of the Same Story?”

● Gen Giuliano and Lisa Schweitzer, “Her Money or Her Time; A Gendered View of Contemporary Transportation Policy”

● Lidia Kostyniuk, “Road User Safety: Women’s Issues”

● Anastasia Loukaitou-Siders, “What is Blocking her Path? Women, Mobility, and Security”

In addition there were a variety of papers on women’s traffic safety, women’s personal security concerns, children’s travel, extreme events and disaster preparedness, and household travel patterns in the US and a number of individual countries.

You may find these papers to be useful in a variety of planning courses as well as your own research.

The website addresses are

● Women’s Issues in Transportation; Summary of the 4th International Conference, Conference Proceedings 46

Vol. 1: Conference Overview and Plenary [pdf] Papers

Vol. 2: Technical Papers [pdf]

The Conference was funded by the UK, Swedish, and US governments, the University of California Transportation Center, UC Davis, METRANS (USC and Cal State Long Beach), and the New Mexico DOT.