Women in Urban Mobility – Working for Female Empowerment
One of the projects in which CARNET will be involved in this 2021 is WUM, “Women in Urban Mobility”. This project, funded by the EIT Urban Mobility, aims to create a unique network of urban mobility professionals across Europe focusing on female empowerment and raising awareness about gender equality in the urban mobility sector.
WUM was proposed with the intention of filling a gap in the lack of networks where women who are dedicated to urban mobility issues can find support, grow, learn or simply be. The initiative, coordinated by the European innovation and entrepreneurship center UnternehmerTUM GmbH, will begin this year by forming a network across Europe. The first steps will be taken in the cities where the partners of the consortium are located being Munich (Germany), Sophia (Bulgaria), and Barcelona (Spain). In these three cities will take place a series of local activities such as workshops, meet-ups, and other similar events that expand and strengthen the network. Such events will be strategically proposed under a sustainable and scalable model, so it will allow them to grow exponentially and be scaled to other European cities. The icing on the cake of the networking events will be a summit at the end of each year: the annual summit “Women in Urban Mobility”. This summit will bring together both, the established local network and the entire EIT Urban Mobility community.
CARNET, with its vast experience in organizing events, workshops, and seminars focused on mobility-related issues, together with the other WUM partners, will add value to their participants through training workshops and networking events. Likewise, Carnet has proposed the panel “Women in Public Transport” within the UITP Summit (International Public Transport Association) to be hopefully held this 2021 in Barcelona.
As well as to foster collaborations and visibility, news from the network and stories of women in urban mobility from local hubs as well as a selection of events for women will be constantly shared through the diverse channels of information, social media, and a regular newsletter.
Two “priority” target groups have been previously identified: the first one is conformed by Young Professionals, Young Entrepreneurs, and Young Students and Scientists, all women. The second group includes women and men responsible for making the decisions in urban mobility. This is not to say that other important social groups such as female high-school students and school-age girls are not considered, this and other groups will be approached in the following years of development of the project. Likewise, groups and women have been identified who are related to the world of urban mobility with a gender perspective, identifying them as a great contribution to the project.
WUM is funded by the EIT Urban Mobility in its BP2021 Call for Proposals for the Education area. CARNET – CIT UPC conforms the consortium together with the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya · BarcelonaTech (UPC), UnternehmerTUM, and JA Bulgaria.
