Shared Terminology & Resources
Gender Terminology
Inclusive Practices for Names and Pronouns in the Classroom​
The University of Minnesota’s Gender and Sexuality Center for Queer and Trans Life offers a free online course that provides an overview of gender, gender identity, gender expression, and other key terms. Although it was designed for faculty, it is good for a general audience.
The Gender Unicorn
Trans Student Educational Resources created a gender unicorn graphic to describe gender identity, expression, and attraction. This is a useful visual tool available in many languages for people of all ages to learn about gender. The site also has a list of gender definitions.
PFLAG National Glossary of Terms​
PFLAG is the first and largest organization for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) people, their parents and families, and allies. A glossary of terms and descriptions are listed on their site.
Intersectionality
Equity​
The GET Collaborative is committed to a fair and just transportation system that serves all people, including underserved communities that have been denied this treatment.
Our efforts focus on the inclusion of women, and girls; Black, Latino, and Indigenous and Native American persons, Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders, and other people of color. This also includes lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and intersex (LGBTQI+) persons; persons with disabilities, persons who are adversely affected by poverty and inequality.
(Developed from the White House National Strategy on Gender Equity and Equality).
Gender
Gender has many components including gender identity, gender expression, sex assigned at birth, and sexual orientation. There are many terms to define someone’s gender, such as woman, man, non-binary, transgender, cisgender, and genderfluid. Gender is continuing to evolve, with social norms, behaviors, stereotypes, and gender roles. Gender is a social construct, and gender is just one part of an overall social identity that forms an individual. This is where intersectionality begins.
Intersectionality​
Intersectionality stems from the overlapping burdens, discrimination, and bias that impact an individual based on race, gender, and other factors, including sexual orientation, ethnicity, religion, disability, age, and socioeconomic status. This includes the intersecting challenges that negatively impact individuals in underserved communities, including communities of color. The term was coined by American scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989, and Crenshaw uses the case of Black women to exemplify how the nature of their experiences should not be simply explained by their blackness or femaleness.
Using an intersectional approach to planning​
We cannot study gender as a sole determinant of travel needs and behavior patterns, because this varies based on varying overlapping personal identities. For example, it is often the case that men travel farther than women, however research shows that this is not true for part-time working women of color.
Planners must use a combination of key characteristics to define a person's identity and can then inform an individual's travel needs, patterns, and behaviors. This may require grouping people based on their gender, race, employment, and family structure. Then, we can compare their travel behaviors to other groups of travelers to answer questions about what the specific travel needs are. For example, a part-time working woman of color with young children has very different needs from another group of travelers.
However, there are gaps in data at the intersection of transportation and identities such as women of color and women in low income households with kids. These groups have limited time to participate in data collection studies even if they may want to participate. This creates an increased lack of representation of those vulnerable groups in existing data, and requires creativity to include the voices of women of color and low-income households with kids.
Gender Mainstreaming in Transportation Planning
Transportation planners and policymakers must consider the implications of actions and plans to all genders. This means including diverse perspectives, concerns, and experiences to be embedded in the design, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation of planning and policies to ensure all genders equally benefit (developed from UN Women).
Gender in Planning
Changing Lanes
Changing Lanes is a gender inclusive report by the LA DOT on the intersection of gender and mobility. Report can be found here. This report describes the “15 minute city” concept, which “promot[es] the location of destinations women most often travel to such as healthy grocery stores, libraries, clinics, recreation opportunities, childcare facilities, and essential services in close proximity to housing.”
Integrating Gender Mainstreaming into U.S. Planning Practice
This journal article describes gender mainstreaming and provides a way for planners to understand how to begin to utilize it in their practice. Access it here if you have an APA account.
Gender Mainstreaming City Comprehensive Plans
A study on how city comprehensive plans can include gender mainstreaming practices to better support all genders in a community can be found here.
Gender-Inclusive Language
An APA memo on utilizing Gender Inclusive language for planners can be found here if you have an APA account. We have also included a PDF here.
Commuting in America
Changing travel patterns and inclusion of greater numbers of women in the workforce can be read here. Created by AASHTO.
Organizations and Initiatives
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International Network for Transport and Accessibility in Low Income Communities
Books
Articles
Other
*We want to acknowledge that this is not the full extent of the resources, research, books, and organizations that exist on these topics, but want to provide some helpful resources to start!