The Research for Community Access Partnership (ReCAP) launched a new infographic video on “Empowering Women through Improved Access” to celebrate the International Women’s Day. The video was prepared by the Roads Research Group in Civil Engineering at the University of Birmingham in collaboration with the Partnership for Sustainable Low Carbon Transport (SLoCaT).

Empowering Women through Improved Access

Improved rural access across rural Africa and Asia has a definitively positive effect on communities and livelihoods. These impacts can vastly differentiate between men and women. This video shows the struggles women in rural communities face, and through improvements in rural road infrastructure and transport services, the positive transformational impact this can have on their lives.

Traditionally, and culturally, women often undertake the majority of agricultural tasks in rural communities. Also, women often take on the duties of food and resource gathering, in addition to bearing and raising children. Out of approximately 410 million people in rural Sub-Saharan Africa who don’t have access to an all season road, women take on almost three times as much of the transport burden than men.

Realising the potential improvement to women’s lives that rural access enhancements can have, ReCAP considers gender and inclusion priority areas for its research. The Programme has explored, among other topics, the transformative impact of gender mainstreaming at household, community and national levels, as well as on rural transport institutions. For more information about ReCAP’s activities in gender mainstreaming in rural transport, please visit the dedicated page here.

The video was produced under the joint ReCAP-SLoCaT project to promote sustainable rural access in the implementation of the 2030 Global Agenda on Sustainable Development. For more information, please visit: http://www.slocat.net/ruraltransport.