I: Introduction
With roughly a quarter of CO₂ emissions resulting from the transport sector, its contribution has been steadily increasing by around 1.7% annually since 1990, underscoring the urgency to implement sustainable solutions. Despite efforts to curb emissions, the transport sector remains heavily reliant on oil products, which account for nearly 91% of its energy consumption. While road transport is the primary contributor to CO₂ emissions within the sector, other modes such as cargo ships and aviation also play significant roles in climate change.
The global transportation of oil and goods plays a pivotal role in capitalism and globalisation, directly linked to the exploitation of natural resources and labour. This system is marked by unequal exchange dynamics and hierarchical labour arrangements which often reflect racial and gender biases. It is sustained by global trading policies in which the European Union aims to enable European companies to move their investments anywhere in the world and export to a range of sectors, to increase the movement of goods and services. For example, EU agricultural subsidies and trade policies have promoted the export of agricultural products of lower quality at cheaper prices to countries in the Global South, outcompeting local subsistence farmers who are often women, while contributing to an increase of CO2 through transportation.
According to the International Labour Organization (ILO), women represent approximately 17% of the global transport workforce, with only 1-2% in seafaring roles. The European Commission reports that women comprise 22% of the transportation workforce in the EU. Increasing women’s representation in the transport sector’s policy formulation is vital to addressing women’s mobility needs. For this reason, significant efforts need to be made to adopt a systematic gender analysis and mainstreaming in all planning and development processes for transportation. When it comes to transportation consumption, research indicates notable disparities in mobility patterns between women and men (there is very limited data on mobility patterns with intersections belonging to LGBTQI groups).