Women’s mobility and transport in the peripheries of three African cities: Reflecting on early impacts of COVID-19

Willingness to pay for COVID-19 mitigation measures in public transport and paratransit in low-income countries

“…These mitigation measures have come with cost implications for the operators which were either supported by government subsidies ( Tirachini and Cats, 2020 , De Vos, 2020 ) or increased fare for passengers. The latter case is more common in most low-income countries ( Mogaji, 2020 , Porter et al, 2021 ), and requires further understanding of the passengers’ willingness to pay for these increased costs.…”

Pandemic impacts on public transport safety and stress perceptions in Nordic cities

“…Third, studies may want to link safety and stress perceptions to measures of PT frequency of use that are more precise than the somewhat ambiguous measure of “normal PT frequency” used in this study. Fourth, the fact that our study reveals substantial variation between relatively similar Nordic cities, reveals an important need to compare our findings with other areas outside of the Nordic context, including with cities in the global south, where issues of safety and security in PT may be far more abundant, uneven and multidimensional, while being less measured, recognized, acknowledged and addressed ( Porter et al, 2021 ).…”

Experiences of Women Workers in the African Road Transport Sector

“…Following a substantial increase between 2017-2018, an estimated 20 percent of all workers in the transport sector were reportedly women in 2018 (Wright 2018). However, even if women find employment in the formal sector, they may face considerable discrimination, ranging from lower pay and lack of skills training and promotion opportunities to sexual harassment and gender-based violence, as evidenced by Wright (2018) in Cape Town and Nairobi and in ongoing research in Tunis, Abuja and Cape Town with drivers and conductors (Porter et al 2021) i . Harassment, the lack of public toilets in urban locations and dangers of night working are among the issues regularly reported by women workers.…”

“…Elsewhere there have been many reports of increased costs of vehicle operation, especially restrictions on carrying capacity to ensure some social distancing, cleaning and sanitising costs, bribes to regulatory authorities (for instance when contravening curfews) and increased costs of imported spare parts, all inevitably reducing profitability for owners and drivers and resulting in both business closures and job losses (Flone 2020; Dalkmann & Turner 2020;International Transport Workers' Federation 2020;Porter et al 2021). In Abuja, members of the Female Drivers Association closed their businesses for a time, while in Cape Town townships, the loss of school transport contracts during lockdowns severely impacted some women who had built good businesses in this area; in both cities women's emotional stresses of risk at work (especially for those in customer-facing and cleaning roles) have combined with massively expanded household demands (obtaining food, caring for the sick, childcare and supervising schoolwork) (Porter et al 2021).…”