City Research Online

Abstract

The gender, racial, and socioeconomic inequalities in active travel are well documented (Lam, 2022). Recent macro-studies (Goel, Goodman, et al., 2022; Goel, Oyebode, et al., 2022a) on gender and active travel show the widespread gender inequality and highlight the existing disparity in the cycling uptake by women in countries with a low cycling modal share, like London. While studies exploring aspects of cycling have seen a marked increase in the last two decades (Pucher and Buehler, 2017) there is a conspicuous lack of literature on sub-groups such as ethnic minority cyclists and especially ethnic minority women. This work seeks to illuminate mobility and the role of visualization in uncovering hidden powers and unseen realities of female ethnic minorities and answer the question: “Can visualizing and digitizing the cycling movement, combined with qualitative methods help us uncover the cycling context of ethnic minorities women that use bicycles and gain new insights into context of and their relationship with cycling?”. It is doing that by developing a visual presentation method tailored to enable maximum exploration of the individual, recorded journeys. The aim of the paper is to present the method and to demonstrate its ability to extract new insights. The importance of the work lies in the fact that we need a better understanding of realities of female mobility in order to inform future work on urban development and the promotion of cycling. By focusing on the specific sub-group, Muslim and BAME (Black, Asian, and Minority Ethnic) women cyclists, this work aims to get away from dominant voices and representations and reach the invisible and overlooked. To achieve this, I worked with a small group of ethnic minority women, who kept a diary of their cycling experience and used a GPS tracker for logging their cycling over a period of two weeks. The data they collected was presented back to them as an interactive individual data notebook that contained visual modelling of their journeys and the diary prompts.
This combination of technology, visualization, and a qualitative approach has revealed that contrary to expectations, the way women move in their environment has been misunderstood as it primarily serves as a means of self-care and not care for others.This empirical work presents a new framing for considering the way female cyclists use their environment and what this environment needs to offer. It is giving a voice to the growing and vibrant cycling undercurrent of ethnic minority women in active travel as well as engaging the citizens-action groups that are supporting mobility (r)evolution.

Publication Type:	Conference or Workshop Item (Paper)
Additional Information:	This paper has been presented at the STS Conference Graz 2023 and it's available online at: https://openlib.tugraz.at/conference-proceedings-of-the-sts-conference-graz-2023-2023
Publisher Keywords:	Active travel, Minority cycling, Data visualisation, Gender, Notebook development
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > H Social Sciences (General) H Social Sciences > HT Communities. Classes. Races T Technology > T Technology (General)
Departments:	School of Science & Technology School of Science & Technology > Computer Science School of Science & Technology > Computer Science > giCentre
SWORD Depositor:	Symplectic Administrator

Export

Downloads