Oppression and privilege in the transport sector

In transport, “neutral” is almost never neutral: it usually means planning for a dominant subject, a commuter who travels home–work–home while care-related trips (taking children, accompanying older adults, shopping, going to the doctor) are left out. These trips often follow a trip-chaining or polygonal pattern. This is not a minor flaw; it is structural oppression. As Frye explains, it isn’t a loose thread, but a birdcage made of many rules and technical assumptions that, together, immobilize women. A double bind appears, for example, either you take longer and more expensive routes to protect your safety, paying with time and money, or you choose the faster route, paying with higher risk and possible sanctions for arriving late. In both cases, the user, often a caregiver, bears the cost.

 

Through Young’s lens, the problem shows up in five faces of oppression. Exploitation: the system relies on the unpaid time and energy of care work (waiting, transfers, accompaniment) to sustain others’ productivity (i.e., trips tied to paid work). Marginalization: because care trips are barely measured, they don’t count in demand models and are left out of investment. Powerlessness: although they are expert users, women rarely have voice or vote in technical working groups or committees. Cultural imperialism: the “standard user”, the male pendular commuter, sets the meaning of efficiency (speed, long through-routes), and everything else is treated as an exception. Violence: the threat of sexual harassment, combined with poor lighting and the lack of toilets or elevators, restricts routes and schedules and harms the mobility of women and caregivers.

 

McIntosh shows the mirror: many men (including planners) move through the city with an invisible knapsack of unearned privileges, less fear at night, being treated as a default “expert,” traveling without a stroller or heavy bags, finding toilets available. Bailey sharpens the path for change: negative privileges (absence of barriers) should be universalized, e.g., safety, accessibility, and reasonable travel times for everyone, while positive privileges (conferred status and credibility) should be dismantled, such as the technical monopoly that discounts care expertise.

 

A feminist approach to transport is not a “social add-on”; it is institutional engineering: (1) measure care mobility (trip-chaining, idle time, obstacles with strollers); (2) redesign infrastructure and operations (lighting, toilets, elevators and ramps, space for strollers and packages, frequencies and request stops during care hours, effective anti-harassment protocols); (3) redistribute power (binding, compensated participation of caregivers; merit criteria that recognize situated experience). We will know it worked when double binds disappear, the five faces recede, and those “privileges” become effective rights for everyone.

 

References

- Bailey, A. (1998). Privilege: Expanding on Marilyn Frye’s “Oppression.” Journal of Social Philosophy, 29(3), 104–119.

- Frye, M. (1983). The Politics of Reality: Essays in Feminist Theory. Crossing Press.

- Young, I. M. (1990). Five faces of oppression. In Justice and the Politics of Difference (pp. 39–65). Princeton University Press.

- McIntosh, P. (1988). White privilege and male privilege: A personal account of coming to see correspondences through work in women’s studies (Working Paper No. 189). Wellesley College Center for Research on Women.