In many countries, transport systems do not provide equal conditions for all users, regardless of their gender, age or residence. This is due to the fact that living conditions of men and women still differ in many aspects – from labour market participation over modal choice preferences to the division of household and family-related activities. These inequalities result in differences between men and women regarding the access to transport services, modal choices and mobility patterns.
Having an efficient transport system can make a big difference, not only in facilitating movement between activity centres, but also reducing the time budget and, consequently, increasing women’s productivity and promoting social equity.
The general aim of DIAMOND project is to propose a set of actions to adequately respond to the needs of women in transport. The achievement of the objective of DIAMOND is dependent on the improvement of transport systems in the selected four Use Cases (UCs): Public transport and infrastructure, Vehicles with dynamic control, Vehicle (bike) sharing and Employment of women in the rail industry and freight. For each of the use cases the improvement must be assessed based on a set of criteria which belong to efficiency, effectiveness and equity.
The 3Es framework
This integrated 3Es approach incorporates the concepts of equity, efficiency and effectiveness, which are among the essential factors in performance evaluation of any type of investment in the public sector. In the context of impact assessment of measures for gender inclusiveness in the transport sector, efficiency is related to the relationship between outputs (effects of fairness measures) and inputs (allocated resources) – concerned with maximising gains while minimising costs. Therefore, efficiency is to achieve the most for available resources.
The effectiveness criterion is determined by the distance between observed outputs and a set of desired goals. It is concerned about whether a particular fairness measure achieves some specific outcomes, the designation of which is couched upon some values.
On the other hand, equity is a distributional principle applied to the allocation of services and benefits in order to achieve what is considered a fair division. In this case, equity dimension treats the distribution of fairness measures on different profiles of Polyhedral Individual.
Therefore, based on preferred fairness characteristics and the fairness measures agreed upon with, 3Es framework will be used to assess the impact of these measures.
Equity, efficiency and effectiveness applied to DIAMOND project use-cases
If we consider the public transport and infrastructure, the aim will be to assess the efficiency, effectiveness and equity of measures proposed to improve usability, accessibility, comfort, design, security, safety and other attributes of rail transport service and related infrastructure.
In order to increase the level of acceptance of women towards autonomous driving technology it will be needed to invest in different measures with focus on safety and security, comfort, mobility and design options of vehicles and related infrastructure. The main questions in this case is whether we can expect the adequate payoff in terms of efficiency, effectiveness and equity of proposed measures.
Different measures can also be proposed in order to increase the use of bicycle sharing. However, to contribute to higher competitiveness of bike sharing in urban transit system, these measures must be efficient, effective and gender balanced.
Improvement of HR policies or introducing of gender inclusive working time models, organising campaigns for raising the awareness related to safety and security of women employees are only some of a spectrum of measures that can contribute to increase the number and satisfaction of women employees in the transport sector. Since all these measures require significant investments within the domain of public sector, their priority must be assessed from the aspect of efficiency, effectiveness and equity
Milos Milenkovic
Dr. Milos Milenkovic is Associate Professor at The Faculty of Transport and Traffic Engineering, University of Belgrade, Serbia. He also holds a position of research fellow at the Zaragoza Logistics Center (MIT-Zaragoza Program).
