Gender and infrastructure

In my previous post I delved into the thorny issue of gender and infrastructure. It's something I have been thinking about a lot recently, both personally and professionally. 

It's the kind of area can sound a little odd. I mean, let's be honest here, the gender impacts of the alignment of a power transmission line aren't really immediately obvious. That said, in certain cases, like public transport policy, there can be some really significant positive or negative gender impacts.

In my experience, gender in infrastructure has been viewed through a sort of a safeguards lens, where you plan your project, then check afterwards if there are any negative gender impacts. If so, depending on how much they cost, you might do something about them. I'm interested in whether that is in fact the best way to do things, or if there's some other way. And, if there is some other way, how we can build systems that incorporate these issues from the ground up.

In Indonesia, pretty much the only people I know that are looking at the practice of this sort of thing are the Indonesia Infrastructure Initiative (IndII), an Australian government-funded program*. They have some great materials on gender and disability and are actively incorporate these issues into their program design.

I have also been lucky enough to have a chance to discuss this topic with Dr. Lisa Cameron of Monash University in Melbourne, whose work on Indonesia I have loved for a long time and highly recommend. I'm hoping she sees fit to add to the academic literature on this sort of thing...

Outside of this, and what I have found with a bit of a google, I'm not that aware of many good resources on the topic. If anyone knows of any good research or interesting researchers looking at this field, please let me know in the comments.


*Full disclosure: I worked for AusAID on the design of IndII (I even came up with the name), and collaborate a lot with IndII on a day to day basis in my day job.