Research grant for project on gender discrimination in Delhi’s bus system

Using field experiments to study discrimination in public transport

Together with Cristina Cibin at Heidelberg University and Girija Borker at the World Bank, Laura Montenbruck studies the effects of the pink ticket scheme, a policy giving women free access to public buses in Delhi. ”While the intention is clearly positive, women have reported that buses are increasingly unlikely to stop for them, raising concerns about discriminatory behavior by bus drivers,” Laura says.

The researchers have conducted interviews with about 2,000 female and male bus users in Delhi, and the results are evident: women report that buses fail to stop for them on roughly 6 percent of trips, around 50 percent more often than men. According to Laura, this points to a broader question about whether policies designed to promote gender equality can inadvertently provoke backlash and discrimination against the very group they aim to help.

The research is executed in collaboration with a local implementation partner who has extensive field experience in India. Laura highlights three main methods: ”The centerpiece is a ’mystery shopper’ exercise, in which we randomly deploy male and female observers to bus stops across the city to record whether buses stop for them.” This is complemented with a lab-in-the-field experiment with bus drivers to understand the motivations behind their behavior, and ultimately a randomized controlled trial testing whether gender sensitization training and monitoring interventions can actually move the needle.

The next step of the project is to work through the data from the 2,000 bus users in Delhi. The findings will then be used to shape the design of the mystery shopper exercise and provide a clearer picture of how discrimination in public transport actually plays out in practice, Laura concludes.

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