Current gaps in policy thinking on gender, transport and information communication technology.
Week 2: Gendered time, travel constraints: the emergence of a gendered literature on transport.
This lecture introduces the literature on women�s time constraints and the impact of such constraints on travel. It tracks the emergence of a gendered literature on transport.
The key reading is:
Sarmiento reaches the conclusion on the basis of the existing evidence that:
"Different demographic subgroups face different circumstances and constraints that could affect their travel
behavior. Working women, in particular, often face income and social constraints arising from the multiplicity
of roles in the market and in the household. Although the division of labor between men and women is
fast becoming more equal, corresponding changes in the division of household responsibilities have been
slower to occur. Women continue to retain primary responsibility for housework. However, the gap is
narrowing down over time. Men are doing more housework than they used to, and women are doing less.
Research in the past two decades found significant differences in the travel patterns of men and women,
particularly among those who are married with children. The findings on women�s travel choices seem to
reflect women�s need to juggle work and household responsibilities. Women made more trips than men.
They make shorter commute trips, and more nonwork trips. Women are more likely to trip chain on the
way to and from work, especially when they have younger children. Employed married women show
more variability in their day-to-day trip frequencies than employed married men. The findings on women�s
mode choices are mixed and location-specific; they must depend largely on the transportation options
available in each location. Women�s work trip schedules tend to be more clustered around the peak; and
this particularly true for women with children."
A very useful and up to date reading on the topic using GIS techniques is found in the recent (2005) Ph.D thesis of Hyun-Mi Kim at Ohio State University:
This research in its investigation of gendered travel patterns in Portland, Oregon reaches the conclusion:
"The results showed that, in addition to women�s lower accessibility in absolute
terms, women�s temporal autonomy was strictly entrapped at only a particular time of
day (in the late afternoon, specifically) regardless of employment status. Furthermore, the
study has examined gender differences in determinants of accessibility and in
travel/location/activity contexts where people participate in discretionary activities.
Women�s lower levels of accessibility than men were largely due to additional
constraints: household responsibilities. Compared to men, the level of availability of
urban opportunities near home was found to be crucial in determining accessibility. In
addition, people tend to enjoy the space-time autonomy in the work-to-home travel
situation, and so the workplace and home are the most central locations of accessibility,
as an origin and a destination. The importance of other locations is relatively higher for
women than for men. Women have more household work, and so need to be at home
more. Therefore, women�s need to be attached to home renders their accessibility more
sensitive to the availability of local urban opportunities.
In summary, women and men do experience accessibility differently in space and
time. These findings suggest that gendered importance of locations and timings, and
accessibility context in travel/activity sequences needs to be explicitly acknowledged to
better understand the gender gap in access to urban opportunities."
The research literature establishes differences in male and female travel patterns, most particularly where households contain children. Many authors caution that there is a need for policy makers to pay specific attention to these gendered patterns in developing effective and efficient transport systems.
For a history of time budget research, go to http://www.scp.nl/onderzoek/tbo/english/achtergronden/history.pdf
For gender and time budget research in Finland, go to http://pascal.iseg.utl.pt/~cisep/IATUR/Papers/takala99.PDF
Household budget, time use and gendered transport data: German Data Source:
Click here to return to Lecture Course Outline.
Margaret Grieco, D.Phil.(Oxon.)
Professor of Transport and Society
Napier University
Edinburgh
and
Maria Goeppert Mayer Visiting Professor
Department of Mechanical Engineering under the auspices of the Centre for Gender Studies
Technical University of Braunschweig
Germany
e-mail at [email protected]