Organisers: Silvia Bruzzi, University of Padua (Italy)
Beatrice Zucca Micheletto, University of Padua (Italy)
In the last decade, the “mobility turn” in human sciences has led to a reconsideration of the concept of mobility that includes now short-distance, daily and/or regular movements and the wider circulation of goods, objects and ideas (Merriman and Pearce 2018). In the same perspective, administrators and urban planners have gained awareness about the fact that women and men move, travel and commute differently. Also, it has been pointed out the recurrent gendered imbalance in the transport sectors, and the need for policymakers to consider also gender in transport planning.
Research has shown that women move on foot or with public transportation more often than men. In addition, male trajectories are usually simpler and more direct than women’s trajectories, and this is strictly connected to their economic roles. Indeed, while usually men move from home to their workplace, in a round trip, female trajectories are more complicated, and has been described as a trip-chaining. These latter depend on the fact that women are almost always in charge of the care of the family members. Women for example push strollers and wheelchairs, bring and pick up the children at school, accompany family members to medical checks, shop for the family (i.e. medicine, foods, clothes) and move also for reaching their work. Yet women’s transportation and way of moving depend also by their economic resources (usually more modest than men’s resources) and by specific ideology of masculinity and femininity which in turn lead to expected behavior of women and men in the society and in the family. Moreover, an intersectional approach also provides evidence of the fact that as women, migrant people, minorities and elderly have different way to move and make a different use of transportation (Moraglio and Kuttler 2021).
These works and research focus primarily on contemporary societies: however, their findings question also scholars studying societies of the past. How have gender practices and transports articulated in different time and space? This panel aims to explore transportation patterns of women and men in a historical and gender perspective, and from a range of disciplinary approaches (economic and social history, history of representation, urban history, history of literature).
Papers should address one (or more) of the following questions:
1) How can we understand transportation and mobility trajectories of women and men in the past societies? What are the differences between them? How the gendered body and spaces have been conceived within the history of transports?
2) What kind of transport did women and men use? What kind of knowledge was required?
3) How did the use of different transport techniques (caravan porters, working animals, steamships, trains, cars, etc.) and the increase of speed in crossing long distances participate in the redefinition of new spaces, dress and gender roles? Which role did different transport techniques play in producing gendered stereotypes and in the (re)production of gender roles?
4) How women and men’s transportation patterns were shaped by economic, cultural and/or social factors (access to economic and/or social resources, expected behaviour for women and men, situation of danger)?
5) How do transportation patterns change representation of women and men?
6) How did transportation policies influence the activities of women and men?
Please send a short abstract (500 words max) and a short CV to the organizers by 10th April 2022:
Silvia Bruzzi: silvia.bruzzi@unipd.itand Beatrice Zucca : beatrice.zucca@unipd.it
We will inform you about the result of the panel selection in June 2022. For further information on the conference please visit : https://www.mobilityandhumanities.it/t2m2022conference/