Move with Women
Indian cities are rethinking mobility through a gender lens. MobiliseHER offers insights from Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, and Kochi on how participatory, data-driven planning can make transport systems more inclusive and enable better access to economic opportunities. The findings underline a global truth: equitable mobility is fundamental to building cities that work for everyone.
Indian cities are undergoing a transformation. Accelerating urbanisation is redefining how people move, connect, and access opportunity, presenting a powerful opportunity: to view mobility not just as an engineering challenge, but as a social one. Transport systems influence who can reach schools, workplaces, and hospitals—and who can participate in city life. To build cities that work for everyone, mobility planning must reflect the experiences of diverse users.
The growing emphasis on inclusive mobility in Indian cities, reflected in national missions, recognises accessibility, safety, and equity as key pillars of urban development. Civil society organisations are complementing this vision by working with communities to translate these goals into practice. Together, they are building pathways for more inclusive, people-centred urban mobility, where lived experiences are integral to how cities move.
Gendered differences in mobility stem from socially dictated gendered differences in daily activities. Global research suggests that men’s travel patterns are dominated by work commutes, whereas women who shoulder a disproportionate share of unpaid domestic and care responsibilities travel for a wider range of purposes, including work and caregiving.
Women’s trips are often shorter, more fragmented, and involve multiple stops or joint travel with mobility dependents, such as children and the elderly. Women tend to depend more on walking and public transport, as they have comparatively lower access to personal vehicles. Traditional transport planning often fails to address these nuances: indeed, the lack of female representation among decision makers and the absence of gender-sensitive mobility indicators are primary reasons for this gap.
Community ideation workshop in Bengaluru, India, co-develop ideas to make public transport and pedestrian networks safer and more inclusive for all, PRIA/MobiliseHER
MobiliseHER, an ongoing project by the Urban Electric Mobility Initiative (UEMI), WRI India, CEPT Research and Development Foundation (CRDF), and Participatory Research in Asia (PRIA), aims to advance gender-responsive urban mobility in Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, and Kochi. Supported by the European Union, the project focuses on strengthening the role of civil society organisations in shaping inclusive transport systems for women, gender and sexual minorities, and marginalised groups. MobiliseHER uses data to reveal gendered mobility patterns and gaps, working with CSOs and government authorities to build capacity and implement gender-responsive solutions. Through participatory planning, it seeks to co-create solutions that improve mobility, expand economic opportunities, and enhance quality of life for all.
Shared communities, streets, and mobility
For the project, the approach centred on listening: documenting how people, especially women and gender minorities, navigate the city, and identifying what enables or restricts their movement. Through large-scale surveys, participatory urban appraisals, and focus group discussions, the project engaged residents—particularly women, people with physical disabilities, and gender minorities—to understand how they move through cities.
The combination of quantitative and qualitative data painted a detailed picture of how gender shapes distinct mobility patterns in the three cities. Civil society organisations (CSOs) played a vital role throughout, providing guidance and insights from citizen mobility enthusiasts, resident welfare associations (RWAs), advocacy groups, and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) working with religious, social, and gender minorities. Their involvement helped facilitate dialogue, strengthen community participation, and build awareness around gender-responsive and sustainable mobility.
CSOs’ strength lies in facilitation and innovation. They bring community interests to the fore and into planning discussions, pilot new approaches, and create opportunities to test and adapt inclusive solutions. Whether it is improving pedestrian infrastructure, making public transport more accessible, or integrating gender-sensitive design, CSOs serve as catalysts for collaboration. By building trust between residents and institutions, CSOs enable planning that is both data-driven and deeply rooted in local experience.
Listening as planning
Focus group discussions in Ahmedabad, India, capturing diverse perspectives from women, gender minorities, and caregivers, PRIA/MobiliseHER
The most meaningful transformations often begin with dialogue. Insights from these discussions revealed that women’s mobility involves balancing multiple roles while navigating time and cost constraints.
In addition to making shorter, multi-purpose trips, women tend to walk more and rely heavily on public and shared transport, often planning their days around familiar routes. Their travel choices are influenced by caregiving responsibilities, affordability, and safety concerns, and many combine commutes with care-related activities such as shopping, escorting children, or accompanying older family members. As a result, their mobility patterns are more localised and closely tied to neighbourhood-level services and amenities.
On average, women spend 140 minutes per day on caregiving—nearly double the 74 minutes spent by men. Although men’s participation in caregiving has risen, the burden still largely falls on women (Time Use Survey, January-December 2024). Interestingly, where public transport is reliable, women’s access to education and employment improves.
Through MobiliseHER, community workshops brought together diverse neighbourhood stakeholders to discuss findings and co-develop practical solutions. These conversations surfaced simple yet powerful priorities: better transit connectivity, cleaner and safer public spaces, and visible signals that safety and dignity matter.
In Bengaluru, participants proposed improved bus frequencies and feeder links to metro stations. In Kochi, residents highlighted the need for clean toilets, seating, and shelters at bus stops. In Ahmedabad, women’s groups suggested gender-sensitivity training for transport staff.
These ideas reflect universal principles of people-first planning: accessibility, comfort, and safety. They also demonstrate that inclusive mobility is not just a social imperative, but a pathway to sustainability. By encouraging more people to walk, cycle, or use public transport, gender-responsive planning supports broader climate and development goals.
From projects to practice
Drawing on insights from co-creation workshops—which invited local solutions and validated the data collected—the next step is to turn these learnings into practice: integrating gender and inclusion into planning processes, building institutional capacity, and piloting scalable solutions.
Experience from MobiliseHER’s three cities shows that inclusive planning can be strengthened through improved city data systems, training transport planners and transit staff in participatory methods, and establishing regular forums for dialogue. As India’s cities continue to expand, the opportunity lies in embedding inclusivity into the core of urban planning. Institutionalising the collection of gender-disaggregated data at city level is essential to developing an in-depth understanding of women’s travel needs and challenges.
Towards equitable and sustainable cities
Riding a bus in Bengaluru, India, Suneha Hameed (for WRI India)
The path to inclusive mobility begins with partnership. Integrating women into the transport sector requires coordinated action across multiple levels and stakeholders. The ability to convene, experiment, and translate local experiences into actionable insights helps cities better cater to all mobility needs.
Currently, there is no formal mechanism to facilitate efficient exchange of data, learnings, or best practices between agencies—yet such cross-learning is essential to scaling and sustaining gender responsive initiatives. Moving away from issue-specific projects to comprehensive, programmatic approaches to gender inclusion will enable cross- and peer-learning, improve investments in inclusive mobility systems for women’s mobility, and consolidate individual efforts and expertise. This, in turn, will help bridge existing gaps in the mobility ecosystem and ensure lasting impact.
In its next phase, MobiliseHER will support ten additional cities in India to adopt similar frameworks, such as building local capacity to design, test, and sustain gender-responsive transport initiatives.
Around the world, cities are reimagining mobility as a tool for equity and climate resilience. When cities listen to their residents, data gains meaning. When residents help design solutions, those solutions last.
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About the authors:
Aravinda Devaraj, Senior Research Analyst, WRI India. Deveraj is an urban transport professional working on integrating gender into mobility systems through evidence-based research and community engagement. At WRI India, she collects and analyses mobility data to help agencies understand how policies impact women and vulnerable commuters. She holds an MS in Transportation Engineering from IIT Madras and a B.Arch from RV College of Engineering.
Harshita Jamba, Senior Program Manager, WRI India. Jamba leads research and programs on how mobility systems impact women and marginalised communities at WRI India. Her work focuses on embedding equity, accessibility, and safety into urban transport through data-driven planning, capacity building, and policy engagement. She holds a Master’s in Development Policy and a Bachelor’s in Philosophy.
A woman hails an auto-rickshaw
in Bengaluru, India, Suneha Hameed (for WRI India)