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Figur 10.1 Dominerande överväganden (färgad box) och prioriteringar (streckad box) som formar arbetsresan.
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In Swedish regional policy, regional enlargement, i.e. geographically extended labour markets and associated longer commuting distances, is an explicit goal. This is in order to stimulate economic growth and better match labour supply to the qualifications of the population. However, this policy seldom takes gender into account, overlooking the imp...
Citations
... Despite what would be expected from underlying changes in the labour market, results from Sweden (Solá, 2013) find mixed evidence regarding to what extent there is convergence or divergence of this gap in gender. Frändberg and Vilhelmson (2011) find the gender gap for commuting trips widening between 1978 and 2006; findings similar to that of Crane and Takahashi (2009) for the U.S. distance commuted are, however, not the only gender-related difference in this respect. ...
... In a society where the ability to move physically as well as virtually is increasing, the factors underlying the geographical extent of our daily activities are changing and multifaceted. This includes social issues (e.g., changing intergroup mobility divides; see Frändberg and Vilhelmson, 2014;Östh and Lindgren, 2012;Solá, 2013) and virtual access and labour market changes (e.g., recent rapid increases in telework; see Green, 2004;Vilhelmson and Thulin, 2015). ...
... Likewise, a higher salary can be invested in mobility resources, giving opportunities for extended activity spaces (Swärdh, 2009). Gender also has important implications for many reasons, including the unequal division of unpaid work in the home limiting the capabilities for many women to participate in certain activities (Solá, 2013;Solá and Vilhelmson, 2012). These factors are also closely related to the duties included among the daily pursuits in which individuals are engaged (e.g., wage labour, education, and household work), duties that are highly decisive for daily activity participation and thus travel. ...
Geography, in terms of the built environment and location patterns, was traditionally, and still is, emphasized by many scholars, policymakers, and planners as greatly influencing people’s daily travel behaviour. However, taking recent decades of rapidly increasing mobility capabilities (physical as well as virtual) into account, and the related increase in individual choice opportunities, others argue that the importance of geographic factors has gradually dissolved. Starting from this discussion, the overall aim of this thesis is to examine the current role and relative significance of the built environment for the geographical extension of individuals’ daily travel in Sweden. The thesis is based on three empirical studies in which particular attention is paid to detailing the impact of geographic factors on various daily travel activities (paper I); exploring possible changes over time in the importance of the built environment for home–work distances (paper II); and the potential relaxing of the relationships between locational structures and travel behaviour when people regularly use ICTs and telework (paper III). All three papers apply multivariate quantitative approaches to a unique combination of detailed, high spatially resolved micro-data, including the national travel surveys and register data of the total population. An overall conclusion of the thesis is that the proximity of various aspects of the built environment to home still plays an important role in how far people in Sweden travel daily. However, the analyses, informed by theory emphasizing everyday spatiotemporal constraints, reveal that these relationships have become relaxed in several important respects. First, the specific time–spatial constraints associated with different daily activities that motivate trips and travel are key and also differentiating factors. When considering trips taken during holidays and for everyday leisure purposes, the built environment is less important for the observed daily travelled distance. Whereas service trips to a greater extent is associated with the built environment surrounding home, and work trips even more. Second, important changes occur over time, here examined in the case of work trips. Workers living in the same neighbourhood increasingly travel divergent distances between home and work. This suggests a continued decrease in the influence of the built environment on work related travel. Third, in terms of time-spatial relaxation, a rapid increase of telework lately is an important case. The built environment influences teleworkers’ daily travel to a lesser extent than it does regular workers’ daily travel since telework allows for the freer scheduling of daily activities in time and space. Conclusively, the results confirm the importance of considering spatiotemporal constraints related to daily activities when exploring the role of the built environment and its importance for daily travel. More generally, the thesis also remind us that the importance of the built environment changes as an integral part of larger societal transformations connected with development of mobility technologies and profound socio-economic and demographic changes.
... The reasons for this include gendered access to resources, social role expectations, preferences, and possibly the patriarchal structure of society which may be based on gendered power relations (see for discussion, e.g. Bianchi et al., 2000;Hakim, 2003;Babcock and Laschever, 2003;Blau et al., 2010; for contributions from transport geography see Hanson and Pratt, 1995;Polk, 1998;Law, 1999;Rosenbloom, 2006;Kwan et al., 2009;Grieco and McQuaid, 2012 and other papers in the same issue; Gil Solá, 2013;Schwanen et al., 2014). ...
... It is difficult to empirically dissect preferences from constraints as preferences may emerge under constrained conditions that people may not be aware of when they reflect their own practices. For instance, Gil Solá (2013) finds that women wish to commute short distances when they have small children more than men, but this 'wish' may rather be the outcome of an internalised social role than a preference, as women are typically socialised to take on this responsibility for being a 'good mother' (Lee andMcDonald, 2003, p. 1285;Schwanen, 2007). 2 Socialisation is a powerful institution that serves to maintain existing structures, not only in terms of social roles and life trajectories (Liefbroer and Elzinga, 2012), but also in terms of mode choice, although evidence is rare (see Haustein et al., 2009 for an exception). ...
This paper studies changes in travel mode specific trip rates after life course (and accessibility) related key events from a gender perspective. It is theoretically informed by the mobility biographies approach, and by gender/travel studies. The data used is the German Mobility Panel (GMP) 1994 to 2010 in which households and their members are asked three times in three subsequent years to report the trips they made over a week. The changes reported are regressed to key events over the life course, cohort effects and period effects, while sociodemographics and spatial context attributes are controlled. A cluster–robust regression approach is used to account for the non-independent character of panel observations. Significant effects were found for some key events, including the birth of a child, entry into the labour market, and changes in spatial context, accessibility and mobility. Some effects differed distinctly between men and women, suggesting that men and women are differently affected by life course events. However, taken together the associations found, as well as their gender differences are rather limited. Hence, key events over the life course seem to be only loosely associated with travel mode specific trip rates.
For the sake of reducing car dependence, much can be learned from non-car owners about how everyday life can, and cannot, be organized without private car ownership. This study aims to explore carless mobility, including the role of the car, in relation to specific everyday projects and life situations. We do so through a descriptive analysis of data from the Swedish National Travel Survey 2011–2016, comparing carless mobility with that of car owners. Theoretically, our analysis builds on a constraints perspective with respect to mobility, which is rooted in time geography. We find that the constraints associated with activities and life situations seem to matter for how mobility is performed and for the feasibility of living a carless life. Managing the material flows of the household (for example, buying food and disposing of waste) is a project handled differently by non-car owners, through using nearby services and with a low degree of car use. On the other hand, our data suggest that maintaining social relations is car dependent and can potentially be more problematic for the carless. Moreover, an individual’s social network itself seems to be an important source of occasional car access. Results also indicate that the life situations of individuals may affect the mobility implications of carlessness, and the largest effect on trip frequency is found among carless retirees. From a planning perspective, and with the ambition to reduce private car use, this study identifies significant value in considering the different contexts of everyday life in which car use may or may not occur.
Research on children’s mobility assumes that children’s independent mobility is important for children’s development, health and well-being, while a decline in children’s independent mobility has occurred. The chapter analyses how children are addressed in regional and municipal transport policies in Uppsala, Sweden. Three rationales are identified which produce particular subjects: a hypermobile subject framed within a discourse of economic growth, a sustainable subject within a caring rationale, and a safe subject within a risk rationale. The discursive absence of children as a social group is discussed, in relation to a parallel sub-discourse of children as particularly protection-worthy. Children are cast as either political non-subjects or apolitical subjects, complicating the formulation of political demands. In conclusion, the chapter discusses the effects age-blind policy-making in transportation politics has on transport planning and urban space.
This chapter discusses cycling promotion and modal conflicts in public space with a particular focus on men, masculinities and transport planning. It draws on three interrelated examples: interviews with cyclists about cycling, media reports on cycling and cyclists’ online discussions on vulnerability. The first two examples illustrate how men and masculinities can be framed as both solutions and obstacles to achieving more sustainable mobilities through more cycling. The third example demonstrates how cycling implies a particularly vulnerable and conflicting position in the traffic hierarchy with implications for men and masculinities. The conflicts over urban space exemplified here illustrate how traditional transport planning has prioritized automobility and, by doing so, reproduced male norms in the transport sector. It is argued that using an intersectional analytical lens can be a fruitful way to challenge existing norms.