bachelorThesis
Retos y conflictos para la planeación del transporte público de Bogotá a partir de la movilidad del cuidado y la violencia de género
Autor
Bernal Castillo, Valeria
Institución
Resumen
This research seeks to highlight the challenges and conflicts for public transport due to sexual harassment and gender violence having several implications for the mobility of care. These are critical issues in the urban transport and mobility sectors. These issues are even more critical due to the incidents suffered by women as users of mass transit systems such as the Bus Rapid Transit BRT system known as TransMilenio, the Integrated Public Transport System network known as SITP, users of taxi services, or, when women are users of mobility services through digital platforms. In Bogota, the BRT stations of the TransMilenio system have been a space in which sexual harassment is taking place in a significant scale. According to the Department of Women Affairs of Bogota, 64% of public transport female users have been victims of at least one type of sexual assault between 2019 and 2020. The urban local districts of Santa Fe and Los Mártires registered the highest number of cases. Moreover, these cases are taking place mostly at urban zones with the highest crime rates. Based on previous studies, we know that women usually avoid public spaces without streetlights; in fact, bus stops are associated with harassment behaviors, issues that impose limitations on mobility and accessibility on women in Bogota. The interdependent mobility (chained trips) and the mobility of care (concept by Sánchez de Madariaga, 2009), recognize the daily trips of women who perform unpaid jobs associated to care tasks such as feeding families, domestic service, household chores, and taking care of children and elderly people. In this context, the research questions aims to understand how the sexual harassment and gender violence affect women’s mobility and accessibility, focusing on transit services. The project focuses on implications of this the sexual harassment and gender violence phenomenon on women´s travel behavior, time and costs of their daily trips considering the fear to recall previous experiences that affected them physically and psychologically. Although previous studies have already identified different types of gender violence against women users of public transport in Bogota, this research provides additional findings of women´s experiences before and during the pandemic of COVID-19 period, bringing new findings regarding travel behavior related to daily trips by taking into account the effects of sexual harassment and gender violence. Additionally, this research confirmed how there is still a social construction of labor division and gender roles associated to the mobility and accessibility of women users of public transport who perform care activities. This research develops a historical analysis of the relationship between gender perspectives and transportation and mobility sectors by making timelines as well as a qualitative data analysis through semi-structured interviews with women who are users of public transport in Bogota. Based on these two approaches, this research aims to understand the sexual harassment and gender violence phenomenon in the case of Bogotá taking into account the pandemic of COVID-19 crisis. Thus, the research findings of this project suggest that women seek to protect themselves instead of hold them back in order to survive during their commuting and public space use in Bogotá. However, the fear refrain them from enjoying the city as a right, imposing additional limits to those related to gender roles divided between procreation and productivity activities. Therefore, this research recommends to the local government to go deeper in their public policies by taking into account in a comprehensive manner the care issues with a women perspective, especially those taking care of children, elderly people, those who are pregnant as well as those involve in domestic service activities. This research recommends quantitative data collection regarding these issues by integrating electronic platforms such as Safetipin. This project recommends that these additional data collection efforts support public policy making and academic research on these topics.