International Women’s Day 2025: Nicki Williams is opening eyes on gender and transport

As highlighted for International Women's Day (#IWD2025) this year, the journey that Nicki Williams has been on to challenge thinking on the topic of gender sensitive design particular to transport is steadily reaching a wider audience.

A landscape architect turned Otago University PhD student, this topic began to gain traction for Nicki not long after she entered the profession and developed further when she worked at the Christchurch City Council between 2014-23.

Be it talks hosted by the Urban Design Forum (UDF Aotearoa), as occurred this week, or given in Ōtautahi Christchurch at the 2023 Living Streets Aotearoa Walking Summit or at the 2021 NZILA Firth conference, Nicki's passion burns brightly for opening eyes to the inequitable nature of transport options in the lives of diverse women.

Speaking to an NZILA audience in 2021, Nicki described how reading the book Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Criado Perez had been a spur for her to begin "digging deeper".

Now, four years later, her thesis, titled 'Improving urban and transport planning and design outcomes for women from diverse backgrounds and circumstances', is near to being submitted.

Nicki contends that while the topic of women and transport is "not new, and has been widely researched for the last 40 years, women’s needs still fail to be adequately incorporated into planning and design practice".

Manatū Wāhine Ministry for Women gave a brief official nod to this in the Bringing Gender In policy tool launched in 2019 by then Minister for Women Julie Anne Genter.

In Aotearoa New Zealand, women make up 50.3% of the population. A proportion of their travel needs relate to the fact that women undertake 69% of unpaid work and that 70% of part-time employees are women. Unpaid work includes looking after children and sick or elderly relatives and managing the household.

The net that Nicki cast for her qualitative research drew her into spending in-depth time with two distinct groups of people.

First a diverse group of 19 women, aged from late teens and up to 70+, in Ōtautahi Christchurch, who Nicki could reach out to through known community networks were interviewed.

The second group consisted of 14 people designated as 'transport system actors' for the influence they have in their professional capacities on the implementation of decisions taken on transport. This group ranged in age from their 20’s to 50’s and worked in all levels of government, private firms and advocacy organisations; in lines of work that included transport engineering and planning, urban design and development, policy planning and being an elected representative.  

“To date the majority of research in this space has considered women as a homogenous group. However, factors such as level of income, ethnicity, age, disabilities and caregiving roles all have varying impacts,” says Nicki.

As an indicator of the diverse and overlapping needs needing to be navigated, ten of the 19 women interviewed for Nicki's PhD research had health concerns or disabilities (two were visually impaired and one was in a wheelchair), seven lived with dependent children, five were single mothers, six were not working or studying and two lived with dependent adults.

Travelling with dependents has an impact on mode choice and the number and destination of trips. There are myriad instances interviewees shared about real-life difficulties, for example:

  • getting to work if public transport schedules run late or require multiple transfers to work locations

  • situations where children can’t safely get to school on their own and/or elderly relatives requiring care don’t have safe and easy access to nearby facilities

  • doing a grocery shop or visit to a dairy without access to a car or a safe cycling or walking route

  • negotiating variable areas of unobstructed public space with a push chair or similar

  • crossing a multi-lane road with a young child at traffic lights when crossing in one go is difficult and the island in the middle of the intersection, if there is one, is small

  • the need and responsibility to reach dependents quickly in an emergency

  • the social isolation that results from limited transport options

In answer to a question at this week's UDF event, Nicki emphasised how important it is for groups of diverse people to be given a voice through what amounts to 'direct consultation'. "The onus is on us to try and seek out the needs people have, rather than waiting for them to come to us".

(Photo credit: Palaver Media)

More than half of the diverse women (10) interviewed by Nicki did not - through a mix of choice, disability and financial hardship - have access to a car to drive, opting instead for walking (8) or buses (7).

Nicki affirmed at the talk that the 'transport system actors' she spoke with were very open to sharing thoughts about the levels of understanding experienced within their workplaces vis-a-vis the relatively inert status quo.

Nicki observed that "ones with greater understanding had themselves experienced (transport barriers) in their own lives and getting to the places they want to go to".

It is worth noting in this context that a survey in 2015 of 624 planners undertaken by Cornell University's Department of City & Regional Planning found that just 2% of comprehensive plans addressed women’s needs specifically, and just 7% agreed with the statement “developers are responsive to the special needs of women.”

Addressing women’s travel needs is effectively in competition with a tunnel-focus on things like reducing travel times for cars. It's that speed of movement that is normalised rather than focusing equally on people who travel slowly by other means. If you don't have a car, the money that goes into car-focused infrastructure investment is not really that helpful.

Nicki: "Women and issues of safety frequently came to mind for professional participants. A strategy such as Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) is one of the only 'semi-compulsory' elements which partly helps to explain the safety focus".

(Slide supplied by Nicki Williams)

“The missing realisation here is that different genders have different needs. Despite their often complex travel, women are more likely than men to walk or take public transport, but are less likely to cycle in car dominated countries such as New Zealand.  

"The lack of education about women’s travel in New Zealand means that any progress on this issue is haphazard and often reliant on the motivation of individuals.

"It's only when we challenge ourselves to apply a different lens to urban design and transport, that we can begin to see things separately to things like the linear A-to-B, home-to-work travel patterns that were designed for and by men.

"It's only then we can begin to understand more about how city zoning practices, priority of road and footpath users, cycle facilities, public transport services, transport planning and travel support can all affect travel patterns for women".

In a #IWD2025 article featured on UN Women titled 'Make 2025 count for feminism: What you can do right now', the point is made that despite significant progress for women’s rights since the adoption of the Beijing Platform for Action in 1995 - 30 years ago - the world is experiencing "new and overlapping crises and the erosion of rights".

The leading message and call to action put forth by UN Women to safeguard the transformative agenda of the Beijing Platform formed around legal protection, access to services, youth engagement, changing social norms and women’s participation in peace, is this:

"Everyone has a role to play in advancing gender equality and women’s rights. While governments have the primary responsibility to fulfill the commitments in the Platform, we all have roles in unlocking equal rights, power and opportunities. Let history remember 2025 as the year the world refused to give up on women’s rights".

With the goal of generating discussion on her chosen area of women's rights, Nicki has been testing a set of open-ended conversation starters with audiences. Modified for this article, they read as follows:

  • Keeping the experience of diverse women in mind, how would the decisions we’re making make things better or worse for them?

  • If we prioritised those who are travelling by the slowest, least protected modes how could their travel be made easier?

  • We live in a car dominant culture where people who drive already have the fastest, most convenient and protected form of transport - do they need any further prioritisation?

  • In what ways can we give a give a bigger voice to those with less power?

The overarching question being posed to all built environment professionals entails a recognition that women’s travel barriers are a political and economic choice. It can be summed up as: "What can we do in our realms of influence to improve the travel experiences, and therefore the lives, of women?".

Nicki didn’t envisage doing a PhD but it is a subject that she has become very committed to. “My reason for doing this was more about being in a better position to create and implement change rather than for career reasons, so I’m not sure where it will take me in the future”.

When she's not spending a five-day week on her thesis ("it's not 24/7 every day, which surprises some people") other pursuits include a leading involvement with Gather Foundation which has the vision of "an Aotearoa where every child and young person has an impact on the design of their neighbourhood". 

  • You can read more about Nicki’s earlier career path here. You can also read an earlier article published by LAA in 2021 about Nicki’s research on gender sensitive design.

SUPPLEMENTARY GENERAL reading & listening:

(Source: Civitas EU )

A Case Study: Kounkuey Design Initiative (KDI)

In-person Resident Advisory Committee meeting. (Source: KDI)

Kounkuey Design Initiative (KDI) is a team of landscape architects, urban planners, civil engineers, architects, community organisers and researchers. It was founded in 2006 by six then-students at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. It has grown into a sixty-person team led by Chelina Odbert, working from four offices: Los Angeles, Coachella Valley, Nairobi, and Stockholm. Chelina Odbert, Hon. ASLA, CEO and founding principal of KDI has called the Handbook for Gender-Inclusive Urban Planning and Design, a report created by KDI for the World Bank as one of KDI’s “most ambitious projects.” It was launched at the World Urban Forum in 2020. See also:

  • Next Stop (2022) - a project with the Los Angeles Department of Transportation (LADOT) to make public transportation more affordable, efficient, and safe for Angelenos of all genders. It pays particular attention to the transit needs of BIPOC women and people with other marginalised genders living in low-income areas. 

  • Changing Lanes (2021) - a study to advance efforts being made by LADOT to achieve a gender-equitable transportation system.

  • Women’s Movement - LADOT

  • KDI News

Design Thinking, International Women's Day, People, UrbanStephen Olsen