She Drives Change: Empowering Women in Transport

Highlights

• Across fiscal years 2019-24, 94 percent of 159 World Bank-financed transport projects approved during this period have incorporated activities to bridge gaps between women and men within the transport sector.
• These projects have benefited 2.84 million beneficiaries with improved transport services and infrastructure, including 1.4 million women.
• These projects are expected to benefit over 21.2 million women (out of a total of 42 million expected direct beneficiaries).
• In Assam, India, women’s ferry ridership doubled from 280,000 to 550,000, thanks to safe and accessible infrastructure upgrade and service improvements.
• In Azerbaijan, policy dialogue led to the removal of up to 700 legal job restrictions for women – including in transport, enabling women to work in roles like laying asphalt and driving city buses.
• In Ecuador, the Quito Metro Line has made metro rides safer for 97 percent of female passengers who had previously considered the metro largely unsafe.
• In Senegal, through the Dakar Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) project, woman’s participation in the BRT workforce has reached 43 percent, up from just 6 percent.

The Challenge

Transport is crucial to connect people to opportunities, jobs, and essential services. However, transport systems often fall short of serving everyone effectively, all the time. Despite increased investments in transport, particularly in rapidly expanding urban areas, not everyone reaps the benefits. Too often, systems are not built with the needs of everyone in mind and some people, particularly women, are left out.

High transportation costs, safety concerns, and limited access can prevent girls from going to school, women from seeking healthcare, and women from pursuing jobs far from home. These mobility barriers restrict women’s workforce participation and stifle economic growth. In contrast, achieving full women’s workforce participation could increase global gross domestic product by nearly 20 percent, helping to reduce poverty.

However, women constitute only 12 percent of the global transport and storage workforce, with limited presence in technical and leadership roles. Barriers exist throughout the employment lifecycle, and regulatory frameworks in some economies further restrict women's access to specific transport roles. Underrepresentation leads to transport systems that do not meet all users' needs, resulting in inefficiencies and talent misallocation.

Transport can also play a key role in supporting women entrepreneurs, who often face barriers such as limited access to business skills, networks, and financing. These challenges hinder their ability to compete for opportunities like public procurement and secure necessary credit.

The Approach

The World Bank uses a multi-pronged approach, structured around three key pillars, to address inequalities between women and men in the transport sector.

The World Bank produces knowledge to identify data gaps in the transport sector and to propose solutions, including "Closing Gender Gaps in Transport," which supports the 2024-2030 Gender Strategy, a technical note detailing how the transport sector globally addresses gaps between women and men in transport, and a knowledge synthesis examining mobility barriers faced differently by women and men. Some of these products have achieved several thousand external downloads, demonstrating significant interest and broad reach.

The World Bank provides technical advice and capacity building, with training certification courses and guidance that include the 2020 e-learning course "Gender Equality in Transportation," prepared jointly with the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women), the 2024 course "Occupational Safety, Health, and Violence and Harassment: A Gender Perspective" prepared in collaboration with the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), as well as the recently released 2025 “She Drives Change: A Toolkit for Redefining Opportunities for Women in Transport”, which provides users with a structured approach to identifying and addressing gaps between men and women in various transport subsectors. These two e-learning courses have been taken by over 1,000 learners. Additionally, training materials are included in the World Bank’s “Leaders in Urban Transport Planners” (LUTP) program, with the aim of building the capacity of urban transport specialists to address mobility barriers and inequalities.

Lastly, the World Bank promotes gender equality through lending and policy dialogue. Over the past six years (FY19-24), 94 percent of 159 transport projects approved during this period have addressed a wide range of constraints faced by women, from mobility barriers for women and girls, to increasing women’s participation in the transport workforce. These concerted efforts across the three pillars, cemented by critical partnerships, are bringing promising outcomes, as discussed below. 

Results

Across fiscal years 2019-24, World Bank lending supported 159 transport projects, with 94 percent of these projects integrating activities to address gaps between women and men into their design. These projects are expected to benefit over 21.2 million women (out of a total of 42 million expected direct beneficiaries). During this timeframe (FY19-24), 2.84 million beneficiaries have already benefited from improved transport services and infrastructure, including 1.4 million women.

Notable achievements span lending to policy reforms, which have successfully addressed employment and mobility gaps, with various projects over the past decade demonstrating promising results:

The World Bank supported Azerbaijan’s Labor Code Reform, which removed up to 700 legal job restrictions for women. Until 2022, Azerbaijan legally reserved 674 occupations for men, including roles in transport, where women made up only 16.5 percent. Following a World-Bank-led policy dialogue, Azerbaijan repealed these restrictions for non-pregnant and non-breastfeeding women in 2022, adopting a health-risk approach for certain jobs. The World Bank also supported efforts of some male-dominated state-owned enterprises to address "soft" barriers (e.g., gender stereotypes) to women’s employment in their workforce. This led to milestones such as Azerbaijan Railways training its first female train operators in 2024.

As the 2018 Quito Metro Line One Project aimed to improve urban mobility in Quito, Ecuador, it also addressed mobility- and employment-related gender gaps. Over 91 percent of women reported experiencing harassment in public spaces, leading many to modify their mobility patterns for safety. The project implemented several measures to address sexual harassment, including a prevention and response protocol and staff training. During the first five months of project implementation, results were significant: 96 percent of women reported feeling safe on the metro, with only seven harassment cases recorded over 20 million trips. The metro also achieved 40 percent women’s participation in its workforce, surpassing the 20 percent target. Notably, women in management roles increased from zero to 50 percent. These achievements marked a key milestone in fostering gender-inclusive public transport in Ecuador, where women make up only 9 percent of the sector’s over 467,000 workforce.

The Assam Inland Water Transport Project improved ferry infrastructure and services in the state of Assam, India, making water transport safer, more accessible, and reliable. Key barriers for women ferry users included poor terminal access, inadequate amenities, harassment risks, and ineffective complaint mechanisms. The project addressed these challenges by providing separate toilets for men and women, barrier-free ferries, grievance redress systems, adjusted ferry schedules, and spaces for women traders. As a result of these concerted efforts, ferry ridership more than doubled from 1 million in 2019 to 2.7 million in 2025, with female ridership increasing from 280,000 to 550,000. In parallel, the "Jibondinga Incentive Scheme" also supported women ferry entrepreneurs with subsidies and training.

The Dakar Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) Pilot Project is at the core of the Senegalese government’s efforts to transform the capital’s transportation system. The BRT line, Africa’s first to be fully electric, serves 300,000 passengers daily, cutting travel time from 95 to 45 minutes. The project has been addressing women’s safety and employment in the sector by implementing safety measures like police presence, closed-circuit television, and awareness campaigns, which resulted in a crime rate of just 3.51 incidents per 1 million passengers. By training women to operate heavy machinery and qualify as bus drivers, the BRT workforce has grown to 43 percent women, up from a baseline of just 6 percent, with women taking on roles in maintenance, driving, and other male-dominated areas.  

In Samoa, women held less than 30 percent of private and only 2 percent of commercial driver’s licenses, while in Tonga, just 15 percent of commercial licenses were held by women. The World Bank's Climate Resilient Transport Projects in Samoa and Tonga aimed to address these barriers by focusing on driver education and safety programs tailored for women, with fees waived in Samoa and subsidized in Tonga. National media campaigns helped shift cultural norms that discouraged women from obtaining licenses. By the end of the pilot phase, over 120 Samoan women earned private driving licenses. In Tonga, 15 women completed a commercial driver training program, learning to operate heavy vehicles like loaders and forklifts. These efforts empowered women economically while contributing to more resilient transport systems. Overcoming barriers in traditionally male-dominated roles in these small island nations can have a significant demonstration impact.

The World Bank-financed Morocco Urban Transport Program was launched in 2015 with the goal of creating an accessible, safe, and reliable BRT system. Key interventions included women-friendly infrastructure, such as ramps, handlebars, and lower grades for easier walking, along with storage space for bags and strollers. Clean, safe public restrooms and easy-to-navigate transfer stations further enhance convenience, while more frequent service and staff training improve safety. By March 2024, Casablanca’s BRT Line 1 served 100,000 daily users, 45 percent of whom are women. This number is expected to grow with the launch of Agadir’s BRT system in November 2025. 

Graphs and Data Visualization

Collaboration Across the World Bank Group (WBG)

Collaboration between the World Bank, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), and the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA) aims to foster synergies and effectively address overlaps in their respective efforts. In 2023, the World Bank’s transport team and the Gender Group developed a joint policy note as a sector-specific background note accompanying the WBG Gender Strategy (2024-2030). Earlier in 2025, the World Bank, the IFC, and MIGA launched the Women in Transport network in collaboration with several other International Financial Institutions (IFIs) to scale up some of their project-based and country-specific efforts. The network aims to support women’s participation in the sector. Initially covering Europe and Central Asia, and the Middle East and North Africa, the network is expected to expand globally. An associated report, released jointly by all concerned parties, called for a greater focus on women's employment in transport and proposed actionable steps to address barriers to women's education, employment, and promotion in the sector.

World Bank Group Contribution

Between the 2019 and 2024 fiscal years, the World Bank approved US$26 billion in financing to transport projects.

Partnerships

The World Bank has formed successful partnerships with several IFIs and United Nations (UN) organizations to address gaps between women and men in the transport sector. Some of the examples include the earlier mentioned e-learning and capacity building certification courses, developed with UN Women and the EBRD, which have not only saved significant financial resources, but reached wider audiences through joint communication efforts. In early 2025, the World Bank Group, together with the Asian Development Bank (ADB), the German Agency for International Cooperation (GIZ), European Investment Bank (EIB), and the International Transport Forum (ITF) launched the Women in Transport network, aiming to consolidate and scale up the successes of individual projects, and to share knowledge and lessons with each other.

Looking Ahead

In the coming years, the World Bank aims to build on and scale up the successes of individual projects and policy dialogues. This will be done by sharing knowledge and lessons learned, identifying what works and what does not in specific settings in line with the World Bank’s revamped approach to amplifying proven solutions. In the short term, the World Bank is responding to client requests to design scalable and innovative transport projects expected to come to fruition within the next few years. For example:

Improving girls’ access to education through transport: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Rural Accessibility Project in Pakistan aims to improve safety and access to schools, health facilities, and markets, and to subsidize travel for girls from marginalized communities, aiming to retain 60,000 girls in middle school and bring 5,500 out-of-school girls into schools over its duration.

Addressing barriers to women’s participation in the transport sector:  In Egypt, the World Bank is supporting the Egyptian National Railways (ENR) to reinstate its in-house childcare facility—a rare feature for a transport project, but one that will help address one of the major barriers (lack of childcare) to women’s entry and retention in the workforce.

Despite the severity of gender inequalities permeating the transport sector, progress is being made, albeit slowly. The World Bank’s experience shows that change is happening through a better understanding of mobility and employment issues, informed by new data and perspectives. These efforts now need to be replicated globally into "best fit" solutions.