Gender Mainstreaming in Rural Road Construction and Usage in Ethiopia: Impact and Implications - Final Report

Documents the process, key findings, and recommendations of the project

Abstract

This Completion Report documents the process, key findings, and recommendations of the project ‘Gender Mainstreaming in Rural Road Construction and Usage in Ethiopia: Impact and Implications.’ The project examined the differential experiences and benefits of rural road planning, road construction, transport, and mobility; for men, Women Spouses (WS), and Woman Heads of Household (WHH). Findings highlight that men exert a much greater influence on road planning, benefit the most from road development, and have much greater access to transport services. Between WS and WHH, the latter stand much disadvantaged due to their lower economic standing and greater time poverty.

Rural road development through the social protection, employment-guarantee scheme PSNP is effective in reaching out the benefits to women, through its gender mainstreaming provisions. The project recommends that more WHH-specific provisions will further enhance inclusion. Women can benefit immensely from skills-development; it will open up higher-paying skilled jobs to them. Women’s mobility will be enhanced through better First-Mile connectivity, their travel experience will improve greatly by management of dust rising from unpaved roads. Most important is the need to proactively introduce Intermediate Means of Transport (IMTs) in rural areas, to fill the gap in rural transport services.

This project is funded by DFID under the Applied Research on Rural Roads and Transport Services through Community Access Programmes in Africa and Asia (AFCAP2 and AsCAP)

Citation

MetaMeta (2017). Gender Mainstreaming in Rural Road Construction and Usage in Ethiopia: Impact and Implications - Final Report. London: ReCAP for DFID.

Gender Mainstreaming in Rural Road Construction and Usage in Ethiopia: Impact and Implications - Final Report

Published 4 October 2017