Good day my good friend.

You all know what day it is today, and I know you have heard about nothing else for the last week. Yes, Learn What Your Name Means Day is here! Apparently, according to Behind The Name, James is from the English form of the Late Latin name Iacomus, a variant of the Biblical Latin form Iacobus, from the Hebrew name Ya’aqov. Which is nice.

I jest, of course, its International Women’s Day today. And so I thought I would make this newsletter one more for the ladies. Enjoy!

If you have any suggestions for interesting news items or bits of research to include in this newsletter, you can email me.

James

Gender and the climate

When doing some research for this newsletter, I came across a report from the International Transport Forum on the role of women in decarbonising transport. Its a really, really good read – as are most of the reports by the International Transport Forum. If you wanted the conclusions in a sentence, its doing gender-based policy making and decarbonisation can be very complimentary, but more needs to be done. But reading it made me realise a secondary value of taking a gender lens to policy making.

Even if you don’t understand the value of gender in transport (frankly you should, but humour me here), you surely should understand the impact of unintended consequences. Taking a gender lens to understanding the impacts of transport policies allows us to bring these consequences to the fore, and allow us to question whether policies or schemes actually achieve their set objectives. As well as for whom, and to what degree, and so we can make changes accordingly. Its a valuable tool that helps us to do better. That’s no bad thing.

Shout, shout, let it all out

It would be remiss of me to not give a shout out to the women who inspire me to do better, and to take the needs of (slightly over) half of the population more seriously. These are certainly not people who we can do without! While there are tonnes of great women in transport, fellow collaborators, colleagues, and mischief makers must come first, so shout out to Joanna Ward, Esther Clarke, Rachel Seymour, Elaine Orme, Jill Bennett, Jenny Milne, Sharon Payne, Jo Hazell-Edwards, Lisa Simmonds, Marie Godward, Amber Kenyon, Pam Turton, Anna Rothnie, and Jenny Cook. Every one of you makes me want to do better!

But I also need to shout out to the 4 most important women in my life. My wife Karen, and my sisters Becky, Emma, and Jodie. Every single one of them are my best of friends, harshest of critics, and are very happy to both raise me up and take me down a peg or two when needed. They make me want to make the world better for them. And if making the world better for the women in your life isn’t enough to take issues of gender seriously, nothing will be.

Random things

These links are meant to make you think about the things that affect our world in transport, and not just think about transport itself. I hope that you enjoy them.

• Lady Rhondda: the unknown suffragette whose efforts led to greater equality for women (The Conversation)

• One Woman’s Quest to Eat 244 Scones Across U.K. Is Now Complete (Smithsonian Magazine)

• Here’s how extreme heat is hurting pregnant women (National Geographic)

• Do no unconscious harm – Researchers are finding new ways to mitigate implicit bias in health care providers (Science)

• Attacks on Africa’s informal settlements are attacks on women’s economic liberation. Here’s why (City Monitor)

Something interesting

How do you build a city for women? This excellent video from the BBC shows the practice of doing just this from Vienna and Barcelona.

If you do nothing else today, then do this

Check out GET-IT. And USE IT. There are loads of great tools on how to put a gender lens into transport planning work. We are an industry of do-ers. GET-IT gives you the tools. So do it!