Today we are celebrating International Women’s Day 2023. The theme this year is #EmbraceEquity. The aim of the IWD 2023 #EmbraceEquity campaign theme is to get the world talking about Why equal opportunities aren’t enough. People start from different places, so true inclusion and belonging require equitable action.
Gender inequity in transport remains one of the key challenges to ensuring a safer and more equitable future for our children, and as such, we need to do something about it.
iRAP’s road safety assessment method, which gives a road a safety Star Rating, aims to address infrastructure-related risk by giving roads individual Star Ratings for four road user groups—pedestrians, bicyclists, motorcyclists, and vehicle occupants. This method, which has now been used in over 100 countries, makes it very hard to ignore the safety of other road user groups in the design of our roads and streets.
iRAP’s method uses a data driven approach to assess the safety of road users. But like anything that relies on data, it is essential we look at this from a gender perspective to better understand the safety of transport for the modes women use. To find out more about how iRAP is using its data to better understand safety for women’s mobility, see our blog post written by Monica Olyslagers – iRAP’s Global Innovation Manager and Cities Specialist.
iRAP’s Training and Accreditation Programme continues to #embraceequity – building capacity around the world
Last year we were incredibly proud to announce 30 recipients for the iRAP International Women in Engineering Day Grant from 19 countries, including Thailand, Uruguay, Brazil, Mexico, India, Philippines, Kenya, Australia, Colombia, Malaysia, Ecuador, Slovak Republic, Cameroon, Romania, South Africa, Peru, Tunisia, Bangladesh and El Salvador.
Algumas das principais dicas dos selecionados sobre como pretendem usar seus conhecimentos incluem:
- Utilizar a metodologia iRAP para avaliar a segurança das estradas e incorporar medidas de segurança na fase de projeto no Quênia.
- Avaliar as vias da cidade de Quito (Equador).
- Priorizar investimentos na Índia.
- Avaliar as estradas na Tailândia e no Laos.
- Para tornar as estradas de El Salvador mais seguras e diminuir os terríveis acidentes que acontecem todos os dias. Com esse conhecimento, poderei auxiliar minha empresa de forma mais eficaz em novos projetos rodoviários que exigem o sistema de classificação por estrelas iRAP.
- Integrar medidas de segurança rodoviária adequadas e apropriadas que certamente solucionarão os problemas de segurança e mobilidade na rede rodoviária nacional das Filipinas.
- Para me dar a oportunidade de desenvolver um trabalho de defesa mais abrangente para criar ruas mais seguras, especialmente para crianças (África do Sul).
Of those who were successful recipients of the IWED 2022 Grants, 55% have already completed their training in the Elementos Essenciais da Classificação por Estrelas e Start Rating for Designs courses (since August 2022).
Over 56% of those who completed the courses and chose to obtain accreditation have either received Acreditação iRAP already or are in the process of doing so.
2022 was our second year of offering the IWED grants – we will continue to work with past and present recipients to encourage training and accreditation and identify what hurdles they may face to continue building capacity. Collectively we can all #EmbraceEquity.
See how we have celebrated International Women’s Day in previous years below.