By Ishan Khokar, Helen Gall, and Kasumi Shirahata
Women's participation in transport is not only about mobility. It is about access to jobs, entrepreneurship, and economic opportunity. Insights from She Drives Change Toolkit demonstrate how transport investments can contribute to more inclusive growth and stronger development outcomes.
Despite progress in recent decades, transport remains one of the most male-dominated sectors globally. Women account for only 12 percent of the global transport and storage workforce, with representation falling to just 5 percent in land transport occupations. At the same time, legal and institutional barriers continue to restrict women's participation. According to the World Bank's Women, Business and the Law database, 73 economies continue to maintain at least one legal restriction affecting women's access to certain occupations, including jobs in transport and other infrastructure sectors, prohibiting women from working during night hours or from roles deemed hazardous, arduous our morally inappropriate.
To explore how transport investments can better address these challenges, the World Bank Group (WBG) and the Quality Infrastructure Investment (QII) Partnership, supported by the Government of Japan, partnered with the World Bank Group Tokyo Office to host a public seminar on July 24, 2026 centered on the She Drives Change Toolkit. Bringing together participants from development institutions, government agencies, academia, the private sector, and the wider public, the discussion was led by WBG Senior Transport Specialist, Nato Kurshitashivili, who guided the audience to explore a broader question:
How can transport investments expand not only mobility, but also women's access to jobs, entrepreneurship, and economic opportunity?
Several key insights emerged.
Infrastructure Is Not Gender-Neutral
A central message from the discussion was that infrastructure investments are not inherently gender neutral.
Women's ability to benefit from transport systems is shaped by a broader ecosystem of legal frameworks, labour market conditions, institutional practices, social norms, safety considerations, and access to finance.
The She Drives Change Toolkit organizes these challenges around three interconnected dimensions, mobility, employment, and entrepreneurship, recognizing women not only as transport users, but also as workers, engineers, operators, managers, and business owners throughout the transport value chain.
The implication is clear: transport investments can generate greater development impact when women's economic participation is intentionally integrated into project design and implementation.
From Mobility to Economic Opportunity
The seminar highlighted the importance of moving beyond access and focusing on economic participation.
While transport projects have traditionally addressed gender through safety improvements and mobility services, these interventions alone are often insufficient to overcome structural barriers to employment and economic empowerment.
The She Drives Change Toolkit provides practical guidance across six transport subsectors including urban transport, railways, aviation, maritime transport, rural roads, and logistics corridors.
Two examples highlighted during the seminar illustrate this shift.
In Azerbaijan, women were prohibited from working in 674 occupations under labour regulations inherited from Soviet era. Through sustained policy dialogue, legal analysis, and occupational safety assessments, these restrictions were lifted in 2022, enabling Azerbaijan Railways to launch its first female train driver program and opening pathways into technical professions previously closed to women.
In Tanzania, the Dar es Salaam Bus Rapid Transit project combined mobility improvements with workforce development initiatives. A structured engineering apprenticeship program enabled several hundred graduates—nearly half of them women—to become registered professional engineers, helping expand women's participation in technical occupations traditionally dominated by men.
These examples demonstrate that gender inclusion is not simply about increasing participation rates. It is about creating pathways to quality jobs, technical careers, leadership opportunities, and long-term economic empowerment.
What the Dialogue Revealed
Beyond the Toolkit itself, the seminar underscored the importance of cross-sector collaboration.
A representative from the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) highlighted a challenge frequently encountered during project preparation: how can transport projects promote women's participation when national legal frameworks continue to restrict access to certain occupations? The discussion reinforced the importance of identifying legal barriers early and integrating policy dialogue into project design from the outset.
Private-sector participants working in data analytics and digital innovation explored how technology can support gender-responsive transport systems. The discussion emphasized that digital tools could strengthen evidence-based decision-making and reporting mechanisms, but that technology works best when combined with policy reforms, institutional change, and efforts to address underlying social norms.
Meanwhile, participants from academia emphasized the wider economic benefits of transport investments, including employment creation around transport hubs, improved access to finance for women entrepreneurs, and greater participation of girls and young women in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM） and engineering fields.
Together, these perspectives reinforced a common message: achieving gender-responsive transport systems require coordinated action across policy, infrastructure, labour markets, education, finance, and technology.
The Next Frontier: Jobs, Procurement, and Economic Growth
Transport investments shape local economies as well as mobility patterns.
Expanding women's participation in these emerging economic ecosystems requires targeted support for entrepreneurship, access to finance, STEM education, and inclusive procurement mechanisms.
Increasingly, development institutions are also recognizing public procurement as a powerful tool for advancing inclusion. Rather than treating gender objectives as stand-alone activities, procurement mechanisms can influence who is hired, trained, contracted, and promoted throughout infrastructure value chains.
Building on this momentum, a new QII-supported initiative is exploring how procurement approaches, including Rated Criteria and the 30 Percent Local Labor Requirement can help maximize local job creation and strengthen inclusion outcomes across infrastructure investments.
Looking Ahead
Supported by the Government of Japan through the QII Partnership, She Drives Change Toolkit demonstrates how quality infrastructure principles can be translated into practical tools that help strengthen inclusion and development impact across transport investments. Since its launch, the Toolkit has generated more than 10,000 cumulative downloads and website visits across over 100 countries, reflecting growing demand for practical approaches to advancing women's participation in the transport sector.
The evidence increasingly shows that transport investments can improve women's lives not only through better mobility, but also through quality jobs, entrepreneurship, and expanded economic opportunities.
As development institutions continue to advance the quality infrastructure agenda, the challenge is no longer whether transport investments can benefit women. The evidence increasingly shows that they can.
The challenge now is translating that evidence into policies, investments, and procurement practices that place women's economic participation at the center of infrastructure development. This is not merely a matter of inclusion—it is a key driver for maximizing the economic and social returns of transport investments and achieving more sustainable, inclusive growth.