Field Experiment to Improve Women’s Mobility

With the generous support of the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies, I was able to visit Lahore, Pakistan this summer to conduct preliminary research with a partner microfinance organization, CSC Empowerment and Inclusion Programme (CEIP). With CEIP I have developed a research agenda broadly related to the issue of women’s (im)mobility and political participation in Pakistan. I ask three related questions. First, what constrains women’s mobility, and what are the costs associated with each of these factors? Second, can media and role models increase participation in a program that aims to improve women’s mobility by offering them low cost scooties (motorcycles)? And third, what are the effects of increasing women’s mobility?

This research agenda is motivated by disparities in the quality of transportation access between women and men in South Asia. In this context, women rely more heavily than men on slower modes of transport to work, and are more likely to have to walk or rely on non-motorized transport. In Lahore in particular, a recent audit on public transportation shows that 90% of female bus-riders have experienced sexual harassment on their commutes. My study location is also within the province of Punjab, where over half of women lack access to public transport and where approximately 80% of men do not recommend their female family members to travel by rickshaw or wagon, some of the most common forms of transportation. For this reason, it is an ideal location to conduct research on understanding the determinants of women’s transport constraints and the political, economic, and social effects of increasing mobility.

With Abbasi funding, I was able to fund or partially fund two trips to Pakistan. On both trips, I conducted interviews with recipients of CEIP’s “Scooty Loan” program. In this program, low-income women receive loans that help them afford motorized scooters, which may otherwise be prohibitively expensive. Those that I interviewed described several systemic classes of problems with their mobility: high costs and lower quality of the types of transportation women tend to take; safety concerns that limit when they leave their homes and where they will travel to; and social norms that make it taboo for them to ride their own motorcycles or leave the home alone. These qualitative interviews are now helping as I design empirical tests based on these insights to answer the above questions. On these trips, I also met with CEIP staff members to discuss our shared goals for our research partnership and to learn more about the functioning of their existing programs to increase women’s mobility. These trips have now laid the groundwork for future stages of research.

I am thankful for the support of the Abbasi Program that made this initial fieldwork possible, and I look forward to building upon the insights gained on these initial trips.