Gendering Smart Mobilities in the Nordic Region

Gendering Smart Mobilities in the Nordic Region aimed at linking three important, but so far separated fields of knowledge and research, environmental, transport and gender research. All fields represented recent interdisciplinary innovations and developments in the field of knowledge production democracy and social responsibility. Besides the initiative met the call for gender mainstreaming, that had been carried both by the EU and by Nordic Council of Ministers and Equality legislation.

This project aimed at strengthening and proliferating Nordic Co-operation and models, and contributed to a paradigm shift in overall transport planning and practices. Departing from the prevailing idea of smart, green and integrated transport’ the overall objective was to contribute to a new Nordic model of sustainable transport, mobility and gender equality.

How can gendering new modes of transport and mobility make change happen? And how can such an approach contribute to systems and practices that are resource-efficient, climate- and environmentally-friendly?

Hanson and Sheller (Hanson 2009, Sheller 2004) argued for more overall approaches to transport research and the need of addressing and deconstructing core ideas of genderless models of choice, and individuality in quantitative surveys and modelling. Others argued for more explorative and interdisciplinary approaches in contrast to the instrumental quantitative studies promoted by governments. ( Aldred et al 2015). A few, distinctive Nordic studies of men and car culture provided findings showing that cars had been co-producers of gender and that they had reinforced the symbolic link between men, masculinity and machines. (Balkmar 2012:16, Landström 2006). Moreover, they contended that the symbolic link between men, masculinity and cars was a cultural phenomenon that was continuously (re)produced in varied ways in cultural meaning-making (cf. Dahl, Henriksson & Levin, 2012).

Existing, but scattered studies at Nordic and European levels had pointed to transport and mobility as producing gendered stereotypes, and how notions of men and masculinity were being linked with speed and mobility; by contrast women and femininity were seen as synonymous with immobility and aligned with home and domesticity. This seemed to be an enduring feature that surfaced in everyday practices as well as in multiple cultural and political forms. It was evident that such ideas, supported the unequal distribution of resources and unsustainable modes of transport, for example in prioritizing of cars, rather than public transportation and non-motorized transport, and hampered the recognition of different kinds of mobility in planning and research. (Christaldi 2005; Grieco et al. 1989; Hjorthol 1990, 1998, 2000; Næss 2007; Polk 2004).

When looking at the interfacing field of transport, gender and sustainability from a research and policy perspective, it turned out to be a vital but also neglected issue. Moreover it was lacking knowledge production of gender equality in family, workplace, health and education both at the Nordic and international levels.

Gendering smart Mobilities in the Nordic Region thus connected to and create synergies between a range of vital, but scattered Nordic and EU wide projects and research areas with potentials for innovative and cross cutting solutions for transport, such as Gender Equality and Climate Change, EIGE Report (2012) Gendered Innovations project, (2013) as well as the Gendering Transport and Mobility workshop at the Nordic Forum in Malmø 2013. The partners in this project had either been PIs or contributed to these and numerous other projects.

Gendering Smart Mobilities, edited by Tanu Priya Uteng, Hilda Rømer Christensen, Lena Levin.
Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group

The book launch was on March 4th and 5th 2020 in Bruxelles.