GENDER AND TRANSPORT RESOURCE GUIDE  
Introduction
MODULE 1:
Why Gender and Transport?
MODULE 2:
Challenges for Mainstreaming Gender in Transport
MODULE 3:
Promising Approaches for Mainstreaming Gender in Transport
MODULE 4:
Gender and Rural Transport Initiative (GRTI)
MODULE 5:
Tools for Mainstreaming Gender in Transport
MODULE 6:
Resources for Mainstreaming Gender in Transport
Acknowledgements
 
Module 5: Tools for Mainstreaming Gender in Transport
Intro |  1  |  2  |  3  |  4  |  5  | Part 6 |  7  |  8  |  9  |  10  |  11  |  12  |  13  |  14 

5.6. Advocacy

Through advocacy - a set of targeted actions in support of a specific cause -- a supportive and self-sustaining environment for gender and transportation issues can be developed.

  • Networking is simply a process for initiating and maintaining contact with individuals and organizations that share or support common goals such as social inclusion and gender issues in transport and agree to work together to achieve those goals.
  • Through advocacy, networks can engage in high-level dialogue with policy makers and other influential leaders on broad policy issues, national policies, and transportation sectoral policies and strategies.

ABCs of Advocacy

  • Always be clear about what changes you want to bring about
  • Be determined and enthusiastic about the case you are making
  • Communicate Clearly

Factors Critical to Success of Any Advocacy Strategy

  • Time: People are busy; research how and when they need your messages and information and deliver it appropriately.
  • Credibility: People are most easily convinced by people they know who have given good advice and people who are knowledgeable (well placed with good sources of information). Use credible sources to deliver your messages.
  • Frequency: Sometimes you need to communicate the same message in different but consistent ways for it to be heard.
  • Language: Use expressions your audience will understand and which they normally use in their own communications.
  • Money: Sometimes people cannot adopt new approaches because they cost money that is not available. Try to secure funds to assist in the change.
  • Evidence: Build a portfolio of evidence supporting your points. Make them relevant, current, accurate and credible.
  • No Choice: Bringing about changes in organizational procedures or planning, monitoring and evaluation systems can force people to change the way they work.
From Balancing the Load Regional Seminars Proceedings, Chapter Three: Toolkit for Effective Advocacy. 1999. IFTD.

Key Questions for an Advocacy Strategy

  • What are the problems?
  • What are the existing policies that cause or relate to these problems and how are they implemented?
  • How would changes in policy help resolve the problem?
  • What type of policy change is needed (legislation, regulation, legal decision, committee action, institutional practice)?
  • How are changes in policies made a different levels?
  • What are the financial implications of the changes?
  • Who are the stakeholders (advocates, opponents, decision-makers, undecided)?
  • Who and what influences key decision-makers?
  • What is the communication structure related to policy making?

Understanding the Target Audience

Divide your target audiences into the following groups and adopt a separate approach for each group.
  • Advocates: Already convinced and influencing others.

    Approach: Learn from them and share your evidence.
  • Benign: Neither for nor against. Most people working in the transport sector fall in this group.

    Approach: Understand their constraints and support needs; provide evidence and skill-building for integration of women in transport.
  • Cannot change: Disagree and see no reason to change; difficult to persuade or engage in debate.

    Approach: Unless they include individuals essential to the success of your campaign, might be useful to ignore them.
From Balancing the Load Regional Workshops Proceedings, Chapter Three: Toolkit for Effective Advocacy. 1999.IFRTD

Influencing Policy Makers

  • In order to bring about effective changes in the policies and practices of policymakers, you need to fully understand the policy context and be seen by policymakers to have this understanding.
  • Influencing today's policymakers doesn't necessarily guarantee gender-aware practices in the future: you need to reach tomorrow's policymakers through training centers, education facilities, and schools to make them gender-sensitive now.
  • Influencing policy makers is an on-going process that requires much more than one workshop or meeting to achieve.
From Balancing the Load Resgional Workshops Proceedings. 1999. IFRTD

Advocacy to Implement Policy Change

  • Stakeholder Analysis helps managers identify individuals and groups with an interest, or a stake, in the outcome of a transport policy decision and provides a framework for assessing the strength of stakeholders' support or opposition, and the resources stakeholders have at their disposal to act upon their position.
  • Political Mapping takes stakeholder analysis one step further by creating a graphic representation of the political landscape for a given transport policy. The map permits a finer-grained assessment of the support and opposition facing policy implementation, and allows implementers to track how various implementation strategies might rearrange coalitions of supporters and opponents.
  • Transport Policy Workshops are a process tool that enables stakeholders to share information, discuss issues, build consensus, and/or develop action plans. Policy workshops are a variant of the team-planning meetings and project-launch workshops used for gender integrated transport program start-ups.
  • Negotiation, another process tool, figures prominently in gender aware transport policy implementation. It consists of a set of analytic methods for breaking issues down into negotiating points, determining acceptable outcomes, and defining bargaining strategies. These methods are integrated with interpersonal communications techniques for managing discussion, dealing with conflicts, and reaching agreements.
  • Coordination deals with how to link the multiple actors involved in transport policy implementation so that the reform steps they undertake are complementary and contribute to achieving the intended gender sensitive policy reform outcomes. Coordination includes information-sharing, resource-sharing, and joint action.
Adapted From Implementing Policy Change Series Management Systems International (MSI)

Social Accountability

Social accountability mechanisms refer to a broad range of actions that citizens can use to hold government officials and bureaucrats accountable.
  • Participatory budgeting of infrastructure
  • Public expenditure tracking for transport
  • Citizen monitoring of public transport service delivery
  • Citizen Advisory boards for transport planning
  • Participation in public transport policy-making
  • Lobbying and advocacy campaigns
Involving citizens in the management of public resources for transport contributes to improved governance, increased development effectiveness and empowerment.
Adapted from World Bank Web Page on Social Accountability

Using Social Accountability for Change

  • The most crucial and challenging element of a social accountability strategy is to be able to elicit a response from public officials and effect real change.
  • Citizens' groups employ a range of both informal and formal means of persuasion, pressure, reward and sanction to negotiate change.
From "Social Accountability: An Introduction to the Concept and Emerging Practice." World Bank. 2004. page 9.

Jakarta Pedicab ("Becak") Drivers Get Organized

Because they are safe, comfortable and cheap, the slow-moving pedicab is a favorite with women who use them for daily marketing and for picking up kids from school. And it's a decent job, too. Where factory workers work long hours and take home 10,000 Rupiahs a day, at the most, a pedicab driver can make up to 25,000 a day, with flexible work times.

In the late 1980s, a new law banned pedicabs from Jakarta's streets, claiming they weren't safe, caused traffic jams and had a "high correlation with Jakarta's crime rate. In June 1998, Jakarta's newly-appointed Governor, announced that pedicabs would again be allowed to operate. Thousands of pedicab drivers came flooding into Jakarta from villages all over Java, and by July, more than 5,000 pedicabs were doing a brisk business on the city's streets. But after only one week, pressure from opponents in the government and in the powerful motor transport lobby reversed the policy. Pedicabs were again confiscated, leaving thousands of men without jobs - this time hopelessly in debt.

NGOs organized rallies, which provided a platform for drivers to meet, organize themselves and discuss strategies for dealing with eviction squads, negotiating with the municipality. A survey conducted by the NGOs found that 86% of Jakarta residents supported the operation of becaks in Jakarta. The Urban Poor Consortium and other NGOs began working with pedicab drivers in many communities.

The Pedicab Drivers Network now includes 3,000 drivers in 24 communities, and has initiated a weekly savings scheme. The ban is still on, but pedicabs are still on the street. A big demonstration in October 1998 resulted in the release of all confiscated pedicabs to their owners, and has given a big boost to the drivers' struggle for their right to work.

From: Taking Steps: Community Action Guide to People-Centered, Equitable, Sustainable Urban Transport.SUSTRAN Network, Malaysia.2000.

Advocacy Resources

See Module 6 for a complete listing of gender and transport resources organized by type of resource and issues. The list below includes resources on topics presented in this section of Module 5.

 
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