The first conference on Women’s Issues in Transportation (WIT) was sponsored by the US Department of Transportation in 1978. The second conference, sponsored by Drachman Institute of the University of Arizona and Morgan State University was held nearly 20 years later in 1996. This conference began to expand the scope from primarily research to include policy-making, planning, and engineering processes.
The third and fourth conferences, held in 2004 and 2009, continued to expand the scope, drawing a diverse cross-section of attendees from national, state, regional, and local levels, public and private sector and academia. Additionally, these conferences saw a marked increase in international participation in terms of planning support, paper submissions, and conference attendees. The 2009 conference included discussions on personal safety and security, changing demographics, crash and injury prevention, and the impacts of extreme events.
