To mark International Women’s Day 2025, the Urban Design Forum is proud to offer a lunch-time opportunity on Thursday 6 March 12:30pm – 1:30pm to collectively challenge our thinking on how women experience moving around our towns and cities.
An online presentation titled Women on the move: Transport through the lenses of diverse women will be given by researcher Nicki Williams.
Nicki is an experienced landscape architect who, after working in local government for 8 years, is now in the closing year of a PhD with University of Otago | Ōtākou Whakaihu Waka.
Nicki: “In essence I am researching how to improve urban and transport planning and design outcomes for women across a diverse range of backgrounds and circumstances. I have a strong interest in designing cities that are equitable, inclusive and accessible and I bring this motivation to all of my work”.
For her PhD research Nicki is using a qualitative approach involving data from in-depth interviews with diverse women about their travel experiences and with people who work in, or who have influence on, the transport sector about their experiences and understanding of women’s travel needs.
“To date the majority of research in this space has considered women as a homogenous group. However, factors such as a level of income, ethnicity, age, disabilities and caregiving roles all have varying impacts”.
“When we challenge ourselves to apply a women’s lens to urban design and transport we can begin to see things differently. We can begin to understand more about how city zoning practices, priority of road users, cycle facilities, public transport services, transport planning and travel support can all affect travel patterns for women”.
“Safety features too. It frequently came to mind for professional participants I interviewed, and probably for most people, but my early findings would suggest it is a bit of a myth to say that women’s travel barriers are just about safety”.
“A bottom line for this is that when women and girls move around an urban environment they shouldn’t face barriers that inhibit them from living a full life”.
You can read more about Nicki’s career path here, and on her PhD candidate page here.
