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Gendered key events in the life course: Effects on changes in travel mode choice over time
Abstract
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.
... Some of this research used the mobility biography approach, which suggests that life events may trigger changes in travel behavior and attitudes (Lanzendorf, 2003). For example, some studies have found that life events, such as childbirth Janke & Handy, 2019;Lanzendorf, 2010;Olde Kalter et al., 2021;Scheiner, 2014b), changing jobs Kroesen, 2014;Olde Kalter et al., 2021;Scheiner & Holz-Rau, 2013b;Wang et al., 2020), car acquisition/disposal Wang et al., 2020), and residential relocation Janke & Handy, 2019;Kroesen, 2014;Olde Kalter et al., 2021;Scheiner & Holz-Rau, 2013a, 2013bWang et al., 2020) are associated with travel behavior changes. Moreover, travel-related attitudes change over time as life events occur. ...
... Research has also highlighted gender differences in response to individual and household life events (Scheiner, 2014b(Scheiner, , 2020Wang et al., 2020). These are linked to the differing societal roles between men and women in many settings. ...
... Men typically use family cars, whereas women may adapt their travel behavior by considering their partner's travel mode choice, especially in car-deficient households (Scheiner & Holz-Rau, 2012). Most mobility biography studies have focused on the direct effects of life events on travel behavior (Scheiner, 2014b;Wang et al., 2020). Only a few studies have considered the interaction effects of life events on past travel behaviors and attitudes (de Haas et al., 2018;Olde Kalter et al., 2020). ...
... However, recent literature suggests that this parenting effect on travel behavior can be influenced by a number of factors, including the parents' age, income, education level, as well as the location of their home and workplace, and that increased cardependency may just be one of many patterns that can emerge [5,[9][10][11]. When looking at gender differences in travel mode choices and car accessibility during parenthood, women are more likely to experience changes in travel behavior than men [7,[12][13][14][15]. ...
... Furthermore, changes of residence may impact the availability and choice of travel mode. Career decisions may also reinforce the labor divisions in the household, which was previously found as an underlying driver of gender gaps in travel behavior [12]. Even though it is beyond our scope, a growing body of literature has started to look at the effect of workplace relocation on commuting behavior, as well as commuting satisfaction and subjective well-being [38,39]. ...
... After entering parenthood, care-related journeys become a significant part of everyday mobility in the household [13]. Women are more likely to be responsible for childcare and household tasks, which can lead to an increase in car use by these women [1,12,15]. It is found that the birth of a first child has a significant effect on women's decision to shift car accessibility from shared access to full access [15]. ...
Entry into parenthood is a major disruptive event to travel behavior, and gender gaps in mobility choices are often widened during parenthood. The exact timing of gender gap formation and their long-term effects on different subpopulations are less studied in the literature. Leveraging a longitudinal dataset from the 2018 WholeTraveler Study, this paper examines the effects of parenthood on a diverse set of short- to long-term outcomes related to the three hierarchical domains of mobility biography: mode choice, vehicle ownership, spatial mobility, and career decisions. The progress of the effects is evaluated over a sequential set of parenting stages and differentiated across three subpopulations. We find that individuals classified as “Have-it-alls”, who start their careers, partner up, and have children concurrently and early, significantly increase their car uses two years prior to childbirth (“nesting period”), and they then relocate to less transit-accessible areas and consequently reduce their reliance on public transportation while they have children in the household. In contrast, individuals categorized as “Couples”, who start careers and partnerships early but delay parenthood, and “Singles”, who postpone partnership and parenthood, have less pronounced changes in travel behavior throughout the parenting stages. The cohort-level effects are found to be driven primarily by women, whose career development is on average more negatively impacted by parenting events than men, regardless of their life course trajectory. Early career decisions made by women upon entering parenthood contribute to gender gaps in mid- to longer-term mobility decisions, signifying the importance of early intervention.
... Moreover, in relation to the trip purpose: the difference is not static but depends on the specific life situation and on changes associated with the respective phases of human life [32]. The key stages which have an impact on travel behaviours include starting work, having children and retiring [20,32,33]. ...
... Moreover, in relation to the trip purpose: the difference is not static but depends on the specific life situation and on changes associated with the respective phases of human life [32]. The key stages which have an impact on travel behaviours include starting work, having children and retiring [20,32,33]. 3. ...
... A review of the literature suggests that the trip purposes are not static but evolve over the course of human life, with such key phases as starting work, having children and retiring [20,32,33]. The evolution of trip purposes depending on the different life stages of both women and men can also be observed in Poland, for example by analysing the results of the CTS conducted in Cracow, as shown in Figure 1. ...
Although knowledge of women’s travel behaviours is essential to guarantee equality in transport, there is still a lack of awareness of gender-differentiated behaviour and gender issues are not often incorporated into urban policy. The aim of the article is to present a first attempt at a wider-scale diagnosis of women’s travel behaviours and needs as well as existing barriers to transportation access for woman in Poland, with respect to current findings. Documents on history, culture, social factors and labour market data were reviewed to indicate factors that may explain travel behaviours. The data of the Travel Studies for seven Polish cities were analysed to diagnose gender differences in travel. Public policies and initiatives were analysed to examine the level of awareness of women’s needs and the adaptation of transport to these needs. The results proved that the greatest differences in the trip purpose was observed for age group 25–49, in which women make more trips for errands, and men for work. Women travel more, which is observed among 25–59-year-olds, if the main occupation is considered. Women travel more on foot and by public transport, while men by private car and the results indicate that it is mostly visible for people aged 25–59. The age groups 39–49 for women and 30–49 for men are the most dependent on the car. The differences may be explained by historical, cultural and social factors, and these factors can be also seen as barriers to achieving equal access to transport. A low level of awareness of women’s mobility needs is one of the reasons that Polish transport systems are not fully adapted to their needs.
... The above-mentioned mobility differences among the two genders derive from the different social roles (e.g., females usually have more varied obligations which include employment, household works, caregiving) and norms (patriarchal power), which have been established for many years [4,13,14]. For that reason, in developing countries, where the roles of males and females are more distinct, it is expected to be observed greater gender mobility gaps [15][16][17]. ...
... It is also noteworthy that even in developed countries, males and females are differently affected by life course events. For instance, having children mainly affects mothers' mobility patterns rather than fathers' [13,14]. ...
... Although the 'mobility of care' concept is rather recent, and despite its methodological constraints, a number of scholars mostly stemming from gender studies have examined different care-motivated trips (Boarnet and Hsu 2015;Fan 2017;Hanson 1981;Lanzendorf 2010;McDonald 2005;Motte-Baumvol, Belton-Chevallier, and Shearmur 2011;Plyushteva and Schwanen 2018;Rosenbloom 1987;Scheiner 2014;Scheiner and Holz-Rau 2017;Schwanen 2007;Taylor, Ralph, and Smart 2015). Accordingly, they have also explored the factors or constraints associated with the total amount of such trips, their modal split and their duration or distance travelled. ...
... In different geographical contexts, previous evidence suggest that care-related trips are more frequently conducted by women, due to the gendered distribution of care-giving and household tasks, specifically evidenced by larger shares among women of trips related to errands or household tasks and daily shopping (Hanson & Hanson 1981), and escorting children (Motte-Baumvol, Bonin, and Belton-Chevallier 2017;Rosenbloom 1987;Schwanen 2007). Other individual characteristics that have been found significant include age, educational level or occupational status (Boarnet and Hsu 2015;Motte-Baumvol, Bonin, and Belton-Chevallier 2017;Scheiner 2014;Waitt and Harada 2016). ...
... All else held equal, women who used public transit regularly in childhood had 55% greater odds of intending to use the REM than women who did not have this experience in childhood. This finding points to a gendered effect of life course on mode choice and builds on an emerging understanding of how life events affect individuals' travel patterns differentially by gender (49). A potential explanation for the lack of effect of men's childhood transit use may be related to differences in travel socialization across gender identities while growing up (50). ...
... Specifically, further studies can investigate how perceived barriers, attitudes, specific travel intentions, and other factors vary for women by age cohort and immigration status. What our study revealed about how childhood experience affects intended mode choice in adulthood merits further investigation as part of a broader effort to understand how life-course events have gendered effects on mode choice (49). In particular, we suggest research on the role of gender-differentiated socialization on travel behavior. ...
Investment in light-rail transit (LRT) has been one of the main strategies of large metropolitan areas in the last decade to tackle environmental, economic, and social issues. In Montreal, Canada, a C$7 billion LRT system is currently under construction and is expected to significantly affect mobility patterns across the metropolitan region. It is crucial to identify how the impacts of such large public investments vary across societal groups to assess whether the distribution of benefits is fair and equitable. Using data from an online survey and a binary logistic modeling approach, we investigated the ways in which intentions to use this new LRT system differ across gender identities. First, we found that women are less likely than men to have an intention to use LRT. Our modeling results show that there are statistically significant differences across gender identities in the effect of certain sociodemographic and travel-behavior characteristics that explain the intention to use the LRT system. In respect of trip purpose, while women and men intend to use LRT for work trips to the same extent, men intend to use LRT for leisure and discretionary travel more than women. Our findings can help in guiding further research into gender gaps in transport studies and inform practitioners on how gender can be considered in LRT policy decisions so that the benefits of major public-transit investments are more equitably distributed.
... Commuting times for men are typically longer than women, though this may be influenced by social and cultural considerations linked to gender [28]. Women face complexities of daily commitments involving compressed travel times given home care responsibilities, trip chaining between different modes, often across multiple locations, in order to fulfill duties regarding vary-ing care obligations, children, household responsibilities, family responsibilities, leisure, etc. [25,30]. Other gender differences are entwined with factors which are weighted in favour of men [28], such as proximity to desired location and access to public transport. ...
... The normalised involvement of women in undertaking the majority of family and care responsibilities, coupled with complex duties and life event triggers, result in travel decisions and factors that influence PT use that is eminently different from those of men [21,29,30]. Further effects on commuting include intermodal access, income, time spent commuting, mobility modes suited to caring duties, and mobility technology promoting efficiency [21,28]. ...
This paper explores the conditions of public transport with respect to user accessibility, design of infrastructure, and safety from a gendered perspective. Our investigation aims to understand the factors that direct a citizen’s choice of whether or not to use public transport. Our discussion is focused on gender disparities among user experiences, so we confine our focus to that of women’s perspectives and their experiences with public transport use. A framework for our discussion was formed with consideration of the theoretical aspects of fairness, justice, and gender in transport, as well as user statistics. We identified several spaces where public transport policy planning and implementation may be improved in order to balance gender disparity of access, safety, and security across the gender divide. (We acknowledge that both distinct and interchangeable definitions of safety and security exist. In this work, we err to the latter, while also recognising from user-based qualitative data that safety concerns are not limited to infrastructure, but also relate to other unwanted sources of physical, mental, or emotional harm experienced within the transport system.) Primary among these was the necessity of both the acknowledgment and appreciation of the issues disproportionately experienced by women. A one-size-fits-all approach was found to ill-recognise the societal minutiae of constant caring responsibilities, income limitations, ability/disability, or the effects of past negative experiences faced by women. We conclude that improvements may be achieved by targeting and meeting actual, not just perceived need.
... In their study of European countries, Prati (2018) show that for countries with lower levels of gender inequality the share of women who never cycle is smaller. More precisely, an unequal division of time spent in carrying out childcare and housework between women and men may prevent women from using bicycle in their daily trips (Aldred et al., 2016;Dickinson et al., 2003;Scheiner, 2014) and increase the car use likelihood among women (Emond et al., 2009;Gershuny, 1993;Jones et al., 1996). Previous studies of cycling behaviours such as Zhao et al. (2015) and Prati et al. (2019) show that women are more likely to make multiple trip chains compared to men respectively in China and European countries. ...
... This is in line with women being more in charge of domestic chores. In addition, the birth of a child is associated with a larger decrease in bicycle use among mothers than fathers (Scheiner, 2014). Moreover, since the current cycling promotion efforts failed to increase women's representation (Aldred et al., 2016;McDonald, 2012): this highlights the need to consider gender equality. ...
This paper tests whether and to what extent the implementation of bike infrastructure increases the propensity to cycle overall and by gender. We develop statistical models to test for gender-differentiated responses to the implementation of different types of bike lanes. We use large-scale Citibike data which records customer behaviours for New York city for years going from 2013 to 2019. Results indicate that an increase in bike infrastructure has a significant impact on the number of cyclists as well as on the gender composition of those who cycle. More precisely, we find that dedicated cycling infrastructure increases women's participation in cycling by 4% to 6%. This corroborates the hypothesis that both men and women are more likely to bike when it is safer, and even more so for women. This is in line with previous literature findings showing the presence of a gender gap in the perception of safety in transport. Results are stable across specifications and robust to the inclusion of city-level and time controls.
... Accordingly, life course studies attempt to record and analyse stages and sequences in people's lives that are separated by transitions typically defined by discretionary events. This is also what the overwhelming majority of mobility biographies studies to date do (e.g., Scheiner and Holz-Rau, 2013a;Oakil et al., 2014;Scheiner, 2014;Sharmeen et al., 2014;Zhang et al., 2014;Klein and Smart, 2019). On the other hand, biography studies tend to reconstruct the subjective meanings someone associates with his/her own life. ...
... Concerning other life events, results are mixed (e.g., Scheiner and Holz-Rau, 2013a;Scheiner, 2014). Birth of a child tends to be associated with an increase in car ownership, driving and walking (the latter being more true for women than for men). ...
Life course approaches to travel seek to understand the dynamics of travel behavior over the life course. This concept, often labeled “mobility biographies,” has recently generated a multitude of studies. The chapter discusses key concepts that may help understand the mechanisms that contribute to stability and change in mode choice. Specifically, it discusses levels of change and stability (ranging between the individual and “the system”), factors that serve resistance to change, factors that trigger change, and the role of socialization in stability and change. The chapter concludes with an outline of research needs. This includes the development and test of stronger theories, developing stronger links between qualitative and quantitative approaches, linking mobility biographies with research on the social embedding of travel, looking at interactions between life domains, behavioral dimensions, and population groups, and the further development of policy approaches.
... With economic development throughout the world, the nature of mode for intra-urban travel has changed over the years. The lifestyle and life situations in the ambit of urban form and the resultant travel satisfaction causes more inclination towards active travel followed by public transport use and decline in use of cars in urban areas of developed nations (Bagheri et al. 2020;Cordera et al. 2019;De Vos et al. 2021;Ding et al. 2017;Mars et al. 2018;McMillan 2007;Mouratidis et al. 2019;Olsson 2003;Pourhashem et al. 2022;Scheiner 2014;Schlossberg et al. 2006;Şimşekoğlu et al. 2015). But the situation highly favouring active travel followed by public transport use for urban mobility of developing countries basically depends upon residents' income, gender, and safety concerns (Abdullah et al. 2021;Gadapalli 2016;Geng et al. 2017;Hu et al. 2018;Oladeji and Agbabiaka 2021;Yang et al. 2021;Olojede et al. 2017;Rathi 2017;Tiwari 2011;Verma et al. 2021;Yakubu et al. 2023;). ...
Paratransit services dominate urban public road transportation in the developing world. Their services are preferred by socially disadvantaged sections, including females. The mobility of females is an integral component of women’s empowerment. Hence, improving their mobility needs special attention, especially in developing countries where females’ travel behaviour often varies from men. Feasibility and operation of transport services often depend on land use, socio-economic conditions, and user perceptions. On this note, the present paper tries to identify research prospects for women’s demand and satisfaction in availing paratransit services in the backdrop of the supply of the latter by scoping review. 194 publications reveal various research themes such as travel behaviour concerning the urban landscape, the role of paratransit in an urban landscape, the transport disadvantage of females and paratransit being currently an option to bridge the gap of this disadvantage. Various bibliometric analyses were carried out, which includes text mining through word cloud and network analysis on keyword linkages. Content analysis has inferred justification provided through studied publications. A few research gaps have been identified. These include dependence between paratransit services and urban landscape features, and, females’ perceptions and satisfaction or dissatisfaction with the service level of paratransits. By addressing these gaps and assessing their necessity, research on these can improvise policies inclusive of female mobility needs by maintaining equity in paratransit service provision for urban layout for sustainable city planning in developing nations.
... However, while higher economic resources seem to favour sustainable choices such as active mobility or public transportation primarily in the context of everyday mobility (Dütschke, et al., 2022), higher education seems to be associated with a more frequent choice for lower environmental impact transport modes (trains and night trains) even for long-distance travel (Curtale et al., 2023;Sovacool et al., 2018). Also, age and gender can affect travel choices through their close association with specific life events, such as entering or leaving the labour market or the birth of a child (e.g., McCarthy et al., 2017;Scheiner, 2014). ...
Addressing air travel demand is a key open challenge in transitioning to a low-carbon society. In Switzerland, where most flights are from/to nearby European countries, their substitution with night train services is a promising alternative. However, still little research investigates whether the demand for night trains is well-established and the motivations behind it. We aim to bridge this gap through a mixed-method study involving 389 Swiss residents who travelled by night train in 2022/23. A web survey was first conducted to identify latent classes of participants based on their daily and long-distance travel mode choices and evaluate relevant pre-dictors of class membership. Participants of each class were then randomly selected to be involved in an in-depth interview on personal experiences and motivations underlying their choices. Results identify three classes of travellers distinguished by a predominant use of rail and public transport (greens), mixed long-distance travel mode choices and car-oriented daily mobility (pragmatists), preference for flying combined with public transport and active daily mobility (dissonants). Travel cost reduction is the only motivation significantly differentiating pragmatists and dissonants from the greens. This result suggests that fluctuations in ticket prices are the main driving force in shifting demand from flights to night trains.
... Scheiner, 2014;Scheiner & Holz-Rau, 2017;Schwanen, 2007). Our results support the latter argument, 397 and thereby decreases the options to align behaviour and attitudes for women, as we can confirm in 398 our sample, particularly during the pandemic. ...
Transportation is a main contributor to global greenhouse gas emissions. For a sustainable transformation, consumers play a crucial role. While sustainability gains importance and is reflected in consumers’ attitudes, consumers’ behaviour does not always align with their sustainability attitudes - a discrepancy called the attitude behaviour gap. The COVID-19 pandemic severely disrupted people’s daily lives and transport choices, potentially
altering their attitude behaviour gap. Thus, the pandemic presents a unique opportunity to understand how crises and disruptions can lead to changes in the alignment between sustainable intentions and actions. Using local survey data from Germany, we identify socio-economic factors and transport infrastructure as key contributors to misalignments between attitudes and behaviour. Notably, during the pandemic, this gap widened, particularly among women and those with children, increasing inequalities among different socio-economic groups. This highlights the need for tailored policies to address the distinct mobility needs of these groups to allow them to act according to their attitudes and counteract increasing inequalities. Moreover, our findings underscore the importance of transitioning from individual motorized transport to public and more active modes of transport. This transition is particularly crucial in the German context, where levels of individual motorized transport are exceptionally high.
... For example, they can purposely locate their businesses close to their houses. Likewise, evidence exists that employed women drive more but cycle and walk less than women attending an educational facility (or apprenticeship) or are unemployed (Scheiner, 2014). This is probably because working women need to reduce their commuting time to cope with tighter time constraints compared to their counterparts who are not in the workforce. ...
... Regarding transportation choice, women tend to walk and use public transportation more often (Levy, 2016;Scheiner, 2014;Basaric et al., 2016;Miralles-Guasch et al., 2016;Greed, 2019;Uteng & Turner, 2019;Bellmann et al., 2020;Havet et al., 2021;Nasrin & Bunker, 2021;Pirra et al., 2021;Abdullah et al., 2022;Chidambaram & Scheiner, 2023;Murphy et al., 2023) and have limited access to private car, which are more commonly used by men as they have the primary privilege for car use within a household (Boarnet & Hsu, 2015;Levy, 2016;Mahadevia & Advani, 2016;Miralles-Guasch et al., 2016;Singh, 2019;Dingil, et al., 2021;Havet et al., 2021;Nasrin & Bunker, 2021;Pirra et al., 2021;Chidambaram & Scheiner, 2023). Some explain this by the diversity of natural preferences between the two sexes and by women being less interested in modes and activities that are largely carried out by men (Miralles-Guasch et al., 2016;Nasrin & Bunker, 2021). ...
The integration of gender into questions of everyday mobility has been the focus of scientific research for several years. Despite the breadth of this topic, few studies on gender mobility are conducted in southern countries. This article attempts to fill this knowledge gap and paint a portrait of women's travel behavior in Tunisia. The study area is the Tunisian Sahel, which was studied as part of a household travel survey conducted in 2019. Based on 2,021 observations, a descriptive analysis of mobility behavior was carried out, providing information about the main travel patterns for both genders in this region. Our analysis deviates from the traditional approach of categorizing women as a unified group, and examining their mobility on an individual basis by considering their income levels. Significant differences were observed between the two genders, which are influenced by the socio-cultural context of Tunisian women and their financial situation. The majority of women are less mobile than men, as more complex journeys are limited to the vicinity of home, and they often rely on public transport. As financial conditions improve for women, travel tends to become easier. Comparing the analytical results of our study with scientific references reveals numerous similarities and differences.
... This phenomenon has been traced to gendered inequalities regarding access to economic resources and a gendered car culture . This uneven access to private vehicles is exemplified through the wage gender gap, women occupying a higher share of part-time jobs than men, or women spending more time close to the home because of the uneven distribution of care work between heterosexual couples (Maciejewska et al., 2019;Scheiner, 2014;Xu, 2020). Overall, the travel behaviour literature has consistently found that the foremost private transport users, and thus the larger emitters, are usually white middle-age men with no recent migration background (Mattioli and Scheiner, 2022;Poulhès and Proulhac, 2022;Wadud et al., 2022). ...
The growing concern over air pollution and community health, demands a comprehensive understanding of the political nature of transport-related emissions. This paper approaches how structures of power influence travel behaviour and, consequently, how they shape emissions from mobility in Barcelona. To comprehend how the intersection of gender, age, and migration background influences air pollution, we use a travel survey to build a set of models that are known to theoretically engage with intersectionality studies. Results show that identities tied to structures of power promote a greater contribution to air pollution than other mechanisms. That is, middle-aged European-born men have the most NO x-intensive mobility practices. In contrast, people that embody intersectional experiences of oppression such as misogyny, racism, or ageism, have lower emission levels. Considering these results, we argue that policies which acknowledge the unequal distribution of responsibilities present an opportunity to reduce emissions from transportation, while guaranteeing fairness and advancing environmental justice.
... Transport studies have established that having children in the home significantly shapes the travel behavior among the household (McCarthy et al. 2021;Craig and van Tienoven 2019;Fan 2017;Scheiner and Holz-Rau 2017;Scheiner 2014;Schwanen 2007). In Germany, research has found women's routine trips to be considerably more complex than their male counterparts', due to the disproportional amount of child-serving trips they take on (Scheiner and Holz-Rau 2017). ...
The COVID-19 pandemic and the public health measures imposed to tackle the spread of the virus have changed the everyday life and severely reduced the mobility of many. In this paper, we investigate the relationship between changed transport behavior and com- plex socio-demographic groups. Drawing on a survey on mobility and transport use dur- ing the pandemic for the Hanover region (Germany), we find three distinct clusters in our data related to changed mobility behavior: (1) people with no change in transport behavior, (2) people heavily reducing public transport use in the inner city, and (3) people reducing public transport use for their commute. In a second step, we use logistic regression models to understand the socio demographic factors determining each of these change patterns.
The results show that women and younger participants were more likely to experience an impact on their travel behavior as well as reducing the use of inner-city public transport, while the reduction of commuter transport seems to be mostly homogeneous once con- trolled for teleworking. We also find a complex interplay between gender and other socio- demographic factors, especially caring responsibilities for children and student status, to have shaped the reported extent of mobility reduction. We show that we need to think about socio-demographic variables in a more complex way instead of perceiving of them as stand-alone variables. Our analysis hence helps to uncover the complex reality of mobil- ity reduction during the pandemic, providing deeper insights into the (im)mobile reality of people’s lives in times of COVID-19.
... A study by Gao et al. [34] found that a childbirth life event was associated with an increase in transportation-related walking among Dutch adults. Scheiner [35] also reported an increase in transportation-related walking after a childbirth life event among German women; however, the increase was mostly to compensate for a decrease in transportation-related cycling. Somewhat contradictory to these prior findings from other countries, the present US study found that Black and Hispanic mothers of YC engaged in a similar level of transportation PA, compared to their counterparts living without children, while Asian and White mothers of YC engaged in even lower levels of transportation PA than their counterparts living without children. ...
Background
American women tend to reduce physical activity (PA) during the transition to motherhood. Their main barrier to participation in PA is lack of time due to new/increased parenting and housework responsibilities. Because there are known racial/ethnic variations in time spent on housework among American women, their PA changes during the transition to motherhood might also differ by racial/ ethnic background. This study aimed to compare PA between American mothers of young child(ren) under age 5 years (YC) and American women without children by their racial/ethnic background.
Methods
Secondary data analyses were conducted using 2011–2018 US National Health and Nutrition Survey data. The study sample included 4,892 women aged 20–45 years (Asian n = 760; Black n = 1,162; Hispanic n = 1,324; White n = 1,646). Participants completed a Physical Activity Questionnaire that asked about participation in transportation and leisure-time moderate- and vigorous-intensity PA (MVPA; minutes/week). Multivariable regression analyses were conducted to compare MVPA among women living without children and with YC (no older children) in each of the racial/ethnic groups.
Results
Overall, the prevalence of physical inactivity, defined as zero minutes of MVPA in a typical week, was 43% (95% CI = 38–49%) vs. 32% (95% CI = 29–35%) among women living with YC vs. without children. The adjusted odds of physical inactivity for women living with YC, compared to women living without children, was significantly higher among Asian (OR = 2.08 [95% CI = 1.37–3.17]) and White women (OR = 1.63 [95% CI = 1.11–2.38]), while it was statistically insignificant among Hispanic and Black women. Among women who reported participating in MVPA, Asian women living with YC had 35 fewer minutes/week of MVPA than their counterparts living without children (p = 0.06), while other racial and ethnic groups showed no significant differences.
Conclusions
American mothers of YC were less likely to engage in transportation or leisure-time MVPA, compared to those living without children. This association was particularly strong among Asian women. The study results suggest that a PA reduction in the transition to motherhood may be particularly large among Asian American women, calling for targeted efforts for PA promotion among Asian American mothers of YC; e.g., culturally-tailored community-based physical activity programs for Asian American mothers.
... However, at a global level, both in Europe, as well as in Latin America, and the United States, the contributions to research on mobility of care come mainly from studies of daily mobility with a gender perspective. Within these categories, the majority using qualitative methods analyze the relationship between travel patterns such as modal choice and degrees of mobility and immobility, of different population groups by age Marquet et al., 2020), gender, social status , and those generated by the presence of children in the home (Scheiner, 2014(Scheiner, , 2020, or choosing to use a specific mode of transportation such as walking, cycling, or public transportation (de la Paz Díaz Velásquez, 2017; Gutiérrez, Andrea and Reyes, 2017). Others approach mobility of care on a general scale using quantitative or mixed techniques, using general mobility or time use surveys. ...
The concept of mobility of care is relatively new and generating growing interest, because it allows a greater understanding of daily mobility and the differences in time use (TU) and unpaid workloads in the population. There is a large unexplored field of study in the relationships between the socioeconomic and gender characteristics of the population and care trips in large Latin American cities. This study uses the Mobility Survey for Bogotá − 2019 to characterizes travel for caregivers in the city, identifying trips made for care reasons, and then relating the analysis to variables of gender, age, socioeconomic status, occupation, and time and mode of transport used, in order to highlight and deepen the understanding of interdependence relationships between caregivers and care receivers. Results show that care work and care trips are carried out mostly by women, and we also find an unequal burden among caregivers and their socioeconomic conditions, with the lower strata population assuming a greater burden for care trips and time use when caring for others. Our findings contribute to the understanding of a phenomenon of growing importance and allow progress in the design and implementation of public policies towards a triple objective: transparency for care tasks and mobility, facilitation of their execution, and minimizing gender and socioeconomic status inequalities.
... In the current study, car transport use increases substantially in early adulthood while AT declines further. Similarly, Scheiner (2014) reports that life events such as the completion of school or apprenticeship and entry into the labor market both lead to higher car use at the expense of active transport modes. In Germany, adults are allowed to drive unsupervised at the age of 18, and approximately 67% of men and 70% of women between 18 and 24 years own a driver's license (Kuhnimhof et al., 2012). ...
The purpose of this study is to investigate socio-structural predictors of active school transport (AST) change and to explore the stability and changes of transport modes during school transitions and into early adulthood in Germany. School transport mode, urbanicity level, socioeconomic status, and migration background were assessed in 624 children (8.9 ± 1.1 years, 51% female) and 444 adolescents (14.9 ± 1.7 years, 48% female) which were followed up longitudinally six years later. The results of multinomial logistic regressions and transition probability calculations indicated that residing outside of rural areas at baseline and follow-up predicts retaining or switching to AST in adolescence. Similarly, higher socioeconomic status at baseline predicted retaining or switching to AST in early adulthood. This research suggests that transition periods are crucial understanding AST behavior and may provide new opportunities for tailored AST promotion programs for different age groups.
... The findings indicated that, for the female group, the cohort from mainland China (2.703) was more likely to travel by bus and train during the pandemic (2.369, p = 0.002, partial η 2 = 0.008) than those from other countries (2.369, p = 0.002, partial η 2 = 0.008). There may be some possible reasons for the gender difference in the choice of public transportation [95][96][97]. An important one is that, psychologically, female tourists from mainland China have a lower perception of risk of infection due to the vigorous health procedures requested by their government. ...
COVID-19, as a rampant health crisis, lies at the basis of fluctuating perceptions affecting decreased demand among travelers. Recent studies have witnessed a growth of interest in the interactions between tourists’ behaviors and other factors with the potential to moderate such behavior during travel. However, it remains to be discussed whether the influence of demographic aspects, especially cultural and gender differences, on tourism behaviors will be more prominent during COVID-19. The current empirical research aims to integrate demographic variables, including gender and culture, with tourists’ behavior in terms of their choice of companions, travel destinations, and mode of transportation. According to the research findings, people in other countries have greater desire to travel than Chinese tourists who, in any case, prefer to travel with friends. Tourists from other countries are more willing to travel by plane and by car. Males show a more positive attitude than females to these means of transportation. Moreover, the interactive effect of gender and nationality reveals that female travelers from mainland China put the train or bus top on their agenda. These theoretical findings have the potential to provide actionable insights into how policymakers and service providers can make adjustments to bring back tourism stifled by COVID-19.
... WFH arrangements are more popular with employees with children at home compared to those without any children present in the household, since it can provide them with the flexibility to balance their work and family roles (Mokhtarian, as cited in López-Igual and Rodríguez-Modroño, 2020). The balance between work and domestic responsibilities are affected by the gender and family life stage of the individual as well (Scheiner, 2014). In general, family related responsibilities are more associated with women as compared to men, regardless of their employment status (Wepfer et al., 2015), and in theory, WFM is more attractive to women rather than men, especially for parents. ...
... Though teleworking is seen as a strategy to reduce the detriments of commuting, Silva and Melo (2018) found that teleworking increased car (and more importantly, polluting-mode) use. Similarly, Scheiner (2014) found that entry into the labor market in general increases car use and leaving the labor market reduces public transportation use. The COVID-19 pandemic caused an obvious change in work habits for many and likely also changed travel behavior. ...
This research regards the COVID-19 pandemic as a major life event with the ability to affect daily activity-travel behavior, and investigates if specific activity participation (work/study, shopping, social contact, free time) is associated with different travel modes (walk, cycle, car, public transportation), with attention paid to residential neighborhood using survey data (n = 854) in Flanders, Belgium. Through mean-comparison tests and regression analyses, evidence was found of (1) compensation for changed working/studying time with walking time, (2) compensation for changed social contact with cycling, and (3) similarly affected travel behavior regardless of residential neighborhood, though suburban residents may have more mode-resilience and less reliance on public transportation. Further evidence indicate that those working/studying may have taken advantage of decreased traffic and congestion with an increase in car and public transportation use and that older respondents may be more likely to hold flexible, teleworkable jobs and treat the pandemic with greater caution. Some travel behavior changes are expected to persist post-pandemic, therefore understanding which life domains are associated with which travel modes can inform policy aiming to decrease motorized and increase active mode use (e.g., for health or sustainability goals).KeywordsDaily travelTravel modeLife domainsUrban mobilityPandemic mobility
... Current studies on this topic mainly focus on working-age women with children. A longitudinal study from Germany (Scheiner 2014) investigated the gender differences of travel behavior changes after life-cycle events, and found that mothers drove less after the first child was born, but drove more after the birth of the second. Low-income working-age women, especially single mothers with children, were found to need vehicles more to balance life and work (Blumenberg and Manville 2004;Blumenberg 2004). ...
This study contributes to the current research by adding a longitudinal analysis of factors related to vehicle ownership dynamics among older adults. Given an increasing number of older people in the low-density areas, the declined vehicle ownership over the life course might add additional travel difficulties to their lives. This study uses the Panel Survey of Income Dynamics (2001–2017), a large-scale panel survey of American households which began in 1968, to examine the role of life-cycle events, household socioeconomic attributes, and built environment factors on vehicle ownership reductions among older Americans. This study finds that becoming alone due to loss of partner or divorce and reduced income are related to decreased vehicle ownership and transitioning into zero-vehicle households. Age and being headed by Hispanics are also positively related to the probability of lowering vehicle ownership from one to zero. The results further demonstrate that female older adults living alone are more likely to live in zero-vehicle households than the male counterparts. This study suggests that policymakers should consider providing additional support, e.g., offering alternative transportation modes, for older adults when owning and using vehicles is temporarily or permanently impossible.
... A wide range of literature has examined the barriers and facilitators for choosing cycling for commuting (Yang et al., 2019;Nello-Deakin, 2020). Studies on travel mode choice have unveiled the determinants of using cycling for transport including commuting on dimensions of the built environment (e.g., residential density (Winters et al., 2010), land use mix (Schoner et al., 2015), street intersections (Piatkowski and Marshall, 2015), cycling infrastructure (Imani et al., 2019) and cyclingsupportive facilities (Buehler, 2012)), socio-demographic characteristics (e.g., gender, age (Scheiner, 2014), income (Aldred and Jungnickel, 2014), education qualification (Piatkowski and Marshall, 2015) and employment status (Nielsen et al., 2013)), distance (Dalton et al., 2013), and individual attitudes and perceptions (e.g., Piatkowski and Marshall, 2015). Some scholars have gone further to examine the role of residential location choice in commuting mode choice (Tran et al., 2016) and the unequal efficacies of built environment characteristics across a city (Eldeeb et al., 2021). ...
Commuters who live spatially proximate to their workplaces have the greatest potential to commute by cycling. Employing the concept of cycling dissonance—the mismatch of individuals who can commute by cycling given a cyclable distance between home and the workplace but travel by other modes—we examine the role of the street-scale environment in commuters' travel mode choice via a lens of modality styles. Drawing on the household travel survey data for Greater Brisbane, Australia and employing latent class choice modelling, two modality styles are unveiled: (1) car oriented; and (2) multimodal but walking averse. Commuters falling within the first modality style are typically middle-aged adults from households that own motor vehicles. Commuters belonging to the second modality style are younger, less likely to own a car, relatively inelastic to travel time, and less sensitive to street-scale environment settings. While commuters in the first modality style predominantly use cars to commute, their propensity for cycling-to-work would likely be markedly higher if the street-scale environment of their route to work could include cycleways and is relatively flat. Those belonging to the first modality style have a higher potential to shift mode from car to cycling given their likely response to shifts in the street-scale environment. By mapping the residential locations of the two modality style groups across the case study context, we spatially delineated locales where cycling dissonance could be reduced by improving the street-scale environment, which has the capacity to inform place-based strategies in prioritising cycling-supportive investment.
... The differences in transport choices and preferences across socio-economic groups as well as the drivers of these differences have been frequently addressed in the literature. Women have been observed to make significantly different choices when deciding when, why and how to use the available transport modes [56,57]. Race also seems to play a role on the access to transport opportunities, and consequently in the decisions on how to move [58][59][60]. ...
The increasing use of new data sources and machine learning models in transport modelling raises concerns with regards to potentially unfair model-based decisions that rely on gender, age, ethnicity, nationality, income, education or other socio-economic and demographic data. We demonstrate the impact of such algorithmic bias and explore the best practices to address it using three different representative supervised learning models of varying levels of complexity. We also analyse how the different kinds of data (survey data vs. big data) could be associated with different levels of bias. The methodology we propose detects the model’s bias and implements measures to mitigate it. Specifically, three bias mitigation algorithms are implemented, one at each stage of the model development pipeline—before the classifier is trained (pre-processing), when training the classifier (in-processing) and after the classification (post-processing). As these debiasing techniques have an inevitable impact on the accuracy of predicting the behaviour of individuals, the comparison of different types of models and algorithms allows us to determine which techniques provide the best balance between bias mitigation and accuracy loss for each case. This approach improves model transparency and provides an objective assessment of model fairness. The results reveal that mode choice models are indeed affected by algorithmic bias, and it is proven that the implementation of off-the-shelf mitigation techniques allows us to achieve fairer classification models.
... Asimismo, la inmovilidad también puede ser observada desde las diferencias de oportunidades, y se han encontrado aspectos vinculados a lo sociodemográfico, particularmente con las inmovilidades de las personas mayores (Olivi, et al., 2016;Cataldi, 2019); desigualdades de género, específicamente en relación con el papel de las mujeres en aspectos vinculados al cuidado en el espacio doméstico y el menor conocimiento de la ciudad habitada (Law, 1999;Scheiner, 2014;Soto, 2017), y desigualdades socioeconómicas, concretamente en cuestiones relacionadas con el lugar de residencia, donde las diferencias de clase implican inequidades sustantivas en la vida diaria (Avellaneda, 2008;Riquelme et al., 2019). Estas particularidades en ámbitos relacionados con el ciclo vital, género y diferencias socioeconómicas de la población están imbricadas con la inmovilidad. ...
Durante el último tiempo, las ciudades de Chile han sido afectadas por las restricciones de movilidad impuestas por las autoridades con el objetivo de frenar el avance de la COVID-19. Considerando esta problemática, el artículo se enfoca en la percepción de habitantes de Temuco, como una de las primeras ciudades del país en afrontar la cuarentena total, respecto a las transformaciones experimentadas a partir de las medidas políticas de limitación de movilidad. Desde un diseño metodológico cualitativo, se analizó la percepción de algunos habitantes en relación con los cambios generados en sus rutinas cotidianas producto de la emergencia de inmovilidades, lo cual se relaciona directamente con la comprensión de la movilidad como una práctica central de las ciudades contemporáneas. Dentro de los hallazgos, destaca la inmovilidad como una categoría que implica diversas encrucijadas cotidianas en las personas, el papel de la movilidad como categoría central para el desarrollo de la vida social, las transformaciones en los hábitos diarios de las personas y, por último, la necesidad de reflexionar el derecho a la movilidad de las personas desde los territorios.
... Further longitudinal evidence investigating changes in frequency of use would be valuable for determining the causality (e.g. Scheiner, 2014b) as well as enabling the investigation of whether changes to transport behaviour are made in anticipation of or reaction to a life event, as investigated in Oakil et al. (2014) and Wang et al. (2018). In addition, the frequency of use questions relied on participants accurately reporting their use of the different modes in the past year. ...
From a mobility biographies perspective, and in line with the habit discontinuities literature, consistency in travel behaviours is context dependent and as such, will be more amenable to change following changes in context that disrupt habitual travel behaviour. Using the UK Household Longitudinal Study (UKHLS), a large-scale, longitudinal, national survey, this study investigates associations between disruption (in the form of life events and transport specific events) and changes in the frequency of car, bus, train, and bicycle use over a two-year period. The analysis extends previous research in this area by considering changes in the frequency of travel for all purposes, not only for commuting. Further, the study tested the self-activation hypothesis through an interaction between experiencing a life event and environmental concern. The results show that residential relocation and parenthood were associated with significant changes in frequency of travel mode use. Relocation showed the most consistent pattern away from car, bus, train, and cycling, while parenthood showed a consistently lower likelihood of increasing use of these modes (except car), but no greater likelihood of decreasing. Transport specific events often accounted for greater likelihood of change in travel mode use – for example, obtaining a driving license, changing the number of cars in the household, and changing to/from urban settings had large associations with changes in travel behaviours – although these were not consistent across modes. Overall, this suggests that changes in the use of the different transport modes were differentially susceptible to the life event and transport specific events.
... Furthermore, education predicts people's household and family constellation, which in turn impacts travel behaviour. For example, parents -particularly mothers -tend to decrease cycling after the birth of a child, and women with higher education tend to become mothers at older ages and have fewer children (Scheiner, 2014). Finally, activity status affects mobility demands, and those with higher education are more likely to be employed instead of being homemakers or in early retirement. ...
Cycling is an environmentally sustainable social practice that contributes to liveable cities and provides affordable and healthy transport. People with lower education could particularly benefit from cycling, as they tend to fare worse regarding finances and health. However, in bivariate analyses, those with lower education cycle less. This article discusses the social meaning of cycling and investigates whether the education–cycling association holds after accounting for (1) confounders and (2) factors that determine decision leeway between different transport modes. I analyse approximately 80,000 short-distance trips (0.5–7.5 km) reported by 28,000 working-age individuals from cities in Germany using multilevel linear probability regression models. Results support that higher education systematically and substantially increases the propensity to cycle. This education gap implies major untapped potential for environmental sustainability, that current pro-cycling policies in cities disproportionally favour the highly educated and that cycling patterns contribute to inequalities in finances and health.
... Moreover, major life events (e.g., change in employment) may change the travel behaviors of individuals over time [41]. To date, several studies have examined the impacts of changes in life events and residential locations on the travel behavior of individuals [42][43][44][45][46][47]. However, many of these studies focused on predicting the travel mode choice, and many other aspects of travel outcomes, such as TTT, were overlooked. ...
This present study developed two predictive and associative Bayesian network models to forecast the tolerable travel time of university students to campus. This study considered the built environment experiences of university students during their early life-course as the main predictors of this study. The Bayesian network models were hybridized with the Pearson chi-square test to select the most relevant variables to predict the tolerable travel time. Two predictive models were developed. The first model was applied only to the variables of the built environment, while the second model was applied to all variables that were identified using the Pearson chi-square tests. The results showed that most students were inclined to choose the tolerable travel time of 0–20 min. Among the built environment predictors, the availability of residential buildings in the neighborhood in the age periods of 14–18 was the most important. Taking all the variables into account, distance from students’ homes to campuses was the most important. The findings of this research imply that the built environment experiences of people during their early life-course may affect their future travel behaviors and tolerance. Besides, the outcome of this study can help planners create more sustainable commute behaviors among people in the future by building more compact and mixed-use neighborhoods.
... Inevitably, this leaves interesting questions and details untouched. For instance, future research could trace individuals from a life course perspective and study at what point people with high and low education in rural and urban settings start to differ in their mobility behaviour (see e.g., Elder et al., 2003;Janke and Handy, 2019;Scheiner, 2014;Scheiner et al., 2016). Another interesting avenue would be to compare small-scale regional entities over time and test to what degree their level and trend in cycling is driven by the educational composition of their population and changes therein. ...
Over the last two decades, cycling in Germany has increased by more than 40%. This paper analyses how this overall increase is broken down by group, characterised by residence (rural and smaller towns vs. medium-sized and larger cities) and education (high vs. low). It analyses (1) how the composition of the population changes according to these groups, (2) how cycling behaviour develops within these groups, and (3) how the changes in composition and behaviour shape the overall volume of cycling. Data on mobility behaviour comes from the large-scale, representative German Mobility Panel from 1996 to 2018, and the analytical sample covers information on more than 28,000 persons over approximately 730,000 reported trips. Data on changes in population composition comes from the German Socio-Economic Panel. Results show that the increase in cycling is unbalanced and largely a consequence of highly educated people in cities who now cycle twice as much and whose share of the population has doubled. This reveals that the cycling boom is bypassing important parts of the population, which limits the contribution of cycling to sustainability goals. Furthermore, the uneven evolution of cycling amplifies social inequalities in finances and health. Finally, this paper shows that increased cycling comes not only from changing behaviour within groups, but also from altered population composition. The most impactful compositional shift is the increasing level of education, which will likely continue to boost cycling.
... Having children tends to reduce active travel for both men and women (Menai et al., 2015;Chakrabarti and Joh, 2019). However, only one study has examined bicycling separately from walking, with results showing that mothers reduce bicycling more so than fathers (Scheiner, 2014). ...
Bicycling has multiple health benefits. Child-rearing may influence bicycling, but little is known about the impact of this between men’s and women’s bicycling, or of number and ages of children on bicycling. This study examined the longitudinal associations between having dependent children and bicycling for transportation and recreation over 4 years among mid-aged men and women. Data were from the HABITAT study (Australia). We analysed data from three survey waves (2007, 2009, 2011) using multilevel logistic regression stratified by gender (N=7758). Findings indicate that having dependent children was associated with bicycling for transportation and recreation in contrasting ways for men and women. The odds of bicycling were higher in men with ≥2 children aged under 18y than men without children (transportation: OR=1.93, 95% CI: 1.26, 2.98; recreation: OR=2.37, 95% CI: 1.67, 3.37). Over time, the odds of recreational bicycling were lower in women with ≥2 children than women without children (OR=0.83, 95% CI: 0.73, 0.93). However, for both men and women, the odds of recreational bicycling were higher in those with children aged 6-12y than those with younger or older children (men: OR=1.86, 95% CI: 1.39, 2.49; women: OR=1.79, 95% CI: 1.31, 2.46). Interventions to promote bicycling must therefore consider gendered differences in bicycling for travel and active leisure, and family circumstances. An opportunity to promote bicycling might be to target parents with children aged 6-12y.
... Studies show that women more often than men undertake 'care trips' where they accompany childrenas well as other dependent family membersto activities, such as childcare institution, school, doctor appointments, etc. (Turner & Grieco 2000;de Madariaga & Zucchini, 2019). Gendered key events such as the birth of a child affects travel behaviour in different life stages (Scheiner, 2014). Thus, care tasks have an impact on women's mobility opportunities and needs at certain stages of their lives. ...
Being both affordable and sustainable, bike-sharing schemes have a promising potential of providing smart and sustainable mobility solutions for all. However, for bike-sharing to become part of a convenient, sustainable, and accessible mobility system, it must meet the needs of a wide range of users. Today, existing supply of bike-sharing schemes rarely take diversity into account: people who travel with kids, people who do not feel secure in biking or people who carry heavy luggage, do not have the opportunity to use the system. The lack of diversity in the contemporary bike-sharing supply presents a problem for visions of smart mobility for all. While a body of research points to differences in bicycling due to socio-economic factors and norms, there is little knowledge on how diverse mobility needs affect the attractiveness of using a bike-sharing scheme. This paper addresses non-users’ perceptions of public bike-sharing schemes in Denmark and Sweden. The empirical material includes 14 in-depth interviews and two focus groups with non-users. Research questions include what everyday mobility needs the informants have, and if they can be meet by the local bike-sharing scheme, as well as how the bike-sharing scheme meets the diversity in restrictions, needs, and preferences of transport. The paper finds that non-use of bike-sharing schemes in Scandinavia can be explained through three overall narratives: ‘I have my own bicycle’, ‘I travel with kids’, and ‘I don’t feel safe.’ It argues that obstacles of using bike-sharing schemes in part can be explained the ‘one fits all’ approach that dominates bike-sharing design today. By adding a perspective on diversity, the paper contributes to filling the research gap in new mobility solutions and diversity.
... commutes longer and further than his female partner, and travel demand and behavior indeed evolved as the changes in female employment and independence (Boarnetand Hsu, 2015;Crane and Takahashi, 2009;Kuhnimhof et al., 2012;Scheiner, 2014). Lastly, personal traits, habits, and preferences influence choice decisions as well. ...
Travel activities and travel behaviors have been greatly affected by the outbreak of Covid-19. Facing the change of individuals’ travel choices, policymakers have to make an appropriate response to mitigate negative consequences. This paper aims to explore how the COVID-19 would impact travel mode choice and the intention of car purchase. The data was collected from a large-scale survey conducted in June 2020 after the highest point. Random utility maximization (RUM), random regret minimization (RRM) and generalized regret minimization (GRRM) are employed to examine the effects of various factors on mode choice behaviors. The estimation results reveal that regret aversion psychology doesn’t have a dominant proportion of decision choices, even if the congested condition of the mass mobility plays a significant role in the consideration of decision-making. Combined with the statistical results from the official departments, we concluded that public transport displays a great propensity on the long trip, and meanwhile, the industry of ride-hailing services has shocked sharply. In terms of the intention of traffic tool purchase, carless people prefer to buy electric two-wheel vehicles rather than automobiles. The research findings and the contribution to policy implications give assistance to authority in understanding citizens’ travel mode preferences under the impact of COVID-19.
... Com o foco principal em adultos, os estudos que aplicam índices de caminhabilidade geralmente não diferenciam resultados entre homens e mulheres, entre classes sociais e/ou etnias. Mas existem exceções que abordam diferenças de gêneros (Bahrainy & Khosravy, 2013;Scheiner, 2014;Giannotti et al., 2017) e que consideraram idosos (Van Cauwenberg et al., 2012;Vegi et al., 2020) e pessoas com mobilidade reduzida (Moura et al., 2017). ...
... Although it is a growing global idea that caregiving and domestic duties should be shared between men and women to give them equal opportunities for work, leisure, and physical activities, some gender stereotypes still constrain women (McGannon et al., 2015;Miller & Brown, 2005). According to Scheiner (2014), the higher commitment of women to caregiving and household responsibilities compared with their male counterparts limits their equal economic opportunities and affects their economic independence. ...
For different reasons, some women experience all-women tours in different parts of the world. Certain aspects of all-women tours, such as their mental benefits, are studied in Western and Eastern countries. However, there is a dearth of study on all-women travels in Muslim-majority countries, despite the importance of women’s issues in such societies. By observing and interviewing eleven middle-aged women who participated in a 1-day, all-women, tour in Iran, we found that being away from family responsibilities, routine life, and gender-related restrictions, as well as advancement in their social and personal selves, contributed to their well-being. The findings show that the mood of women undergoing later life transitions may benefit from such commonplace tours with their peer group. We also discuss women’s right to travel in the context of travel sustainability.
Mobility research and theory suggests that new parents often develop a car-dependent way of living that runs counter to prevailing climate policies. In this context, the current study investigates the influence of public transport accessibility on car ownership among first-time parents in the Oslo region. Specific attention is paid to how the effect of accessibility varies with different income levels. Linear probability and fixed-effects models are applied to parents and a control group of non-parents to explore these relationships. The results show that public transport accessibility reduces the likelihood of car ownership in the years after family formation, although with larger impacts for some income groups than for others. Households with a high income combine car ownership with high access, whereas others seem to sacrifice one for the other. These findings have several policy implications. First, urban regions with a combination of gentrification in the central city and increasing poverty in suburban areas face a potential conflict between environmental and social sustainability. Finding ways to increase central-city opportunities for low- and medium-income families is a difficult but important step towards greater overall sustainability. Second, the reduction of car ownership among high-income households appears to require supplementary measures. The article ends with a discussion of the findings in the context of broader urban policy development, particularly in relation to the prioritisation of collective consumption.
Bu çalışmada kadınların ve erkeklerin farklı seyahat davranışları araştırılmıştır. Farklı seyahat davranışına neden olan toplumsal cinsiyet konularına değinilmiş ve konu ile ilgili yapılmış bilimsel araştırmaların bibliyometrik analizi sunulmuştur. Kadınların ve erkeklerin ulaşım sistemlerinden nasıl faydalandıklarının anlaşılması için Türkiye geneli İstatistiki ve İstatistiki Bölge Birimleri Sınıflandırması 2. Düzey (İBBS-2) ölçeğinde yapılmış olan bir anket çalışmasından sonuçlar paylaşılmıştır. Türkiye’de kadın ve erkeklerin seyahat aracı kullanarak gerçekleştirecekleri aktivitelerde hangi ulaşım türünden faydalandıkları araştırılmıştır. Çalışmanın sonucunda kadınların erkeklerden daha fazla kent içi toplu ulaşım araçları kullandığı görülmüştür. Erkeklerin toplamının yüzde 41’i kent içi toplu ulaşım araçlarından faydalanırken kadınların toplamının yüzde 54’ünün kent içi ulaşım sistemlerinden faydalandığı ortaya koyulmuştur. Kadınların ve erkeklerin hangi ulaşım aracından hangi oranda faydalandıkları grafik yöntemi kullanılarak açıkça ifade edilmiştir. Yapılan bilimsel araştırmalar ve anket çalışmaları sonucunda kadınların ve erkeklerin seyahat davranışlarının farklılığı üzerine tartışılmış ve ulaşım planlama politikalarına toplumsal cinsiyet perspektifinin entegre edilmesi ile ilgili öneriler geliştirilmiştir.
Increasing women’s access to car is advocated as a key strategy to improve women’s capability to move. However, car ownership is not equal to car access and independent car use. The men-favored car distribution within the household may exist to limit women’s access to car. This paper enriches the understanding of gendered access to household car by unpacking the mediation role of subjective attitudes. Perceived necessity to use household car and confidence in driving ability are examined specifically. The results of structural equation modelling support the assumptions that in China (a) perceived necessity increases individual access to household car; (b) being employed and in parenthood both increase women’s perceived necessity and thus the access to household car, while men’s access to household car and perceived necessity is increased only by the employment status; and (c) women’s access to household car is reduced by their tendency to lack confidence in driving. The findings suggest that recognizing the necessity of using a car and developing the confidence to drive is essential for women to improve their automobile mobility.
The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly affected travel behavior, including the frequency and mode of travel, with the magnitude and nature of these effects varying over time. This study investigates the nature of these relationships by examining changes in various measures of travel behavior, including weekly driving hours, as well as the frequency of telecommuting, use of ride-sharing services, travel for medical purposes, and use of food delivery services. Self-reported travel data from a representative statewide survey of Michigan residents were used to assess changes in these metrics during the early stages of the pandemic, as well as one year thereafter. Random effects linear regression and ordered logit regression models were estimated and the findings show that various changes in behavior had long-lasting effects, while other behaviors generally reverted back toward pre-pandemic levels. In addition, these changes were found to vary across individuals. For example, significant differences were observed based on socio-demographic characteristics, between urban and rural areas, and amongst individuals with differing views on COVID-19 and related government interventions. In general, the pandemic tended to have less pronounced and sustained effects among younger adults as compared to older age groups. Further, those individuals who were opposed to mandatory COVID-19 vaccines were less likely to change their travel behavior, during both the early and latter stages of the pandemic. Changes were observed consistently across most of the travel metrics of interest. Among these, overall driving hours, travel for medical purposes, and ride-sharing were still lower during the latter stages of the pandemic, while telecommuting and the use of food delivery services reverted nearer to pre-pandemic levels.
Gender differences in travel behaviour have been a key issue in the field of travel decision-making. Ensuring gender equity in travel services is an important part of social equity. Many foreign studies have focused on the various differences in travel characteristics between men and women. There are relatively few studies on gender difference in travel behaviour in China, and discussions on the reasons for the formation of gender difference are also quite scarce. This study takes the megacity of Beijing as an example, uses the 2015 Beijing residents’ travel survey data to identify the differences in travel decisions of male and female residents, and discusses the gender gaps in travel purpose, travel mode, trip frequency and travel space span. The results show that the travel activities of male residents in Beijing are mainly for working, and that they are more dependent on private transport. The proportion of leisure activities among female residents is significantly higher than that of males, and the use rate of public transport is higher. In addition, the data show that male residents have a relatively higher trip frequency per day and a relatively wider space span of trips. Based on these gender gaps in travel behaviour, a comprehensive transport service system that adapts to the population structure, especially the gender structure, is necessary to provide differentiated and personalised travel services to protect women’s travel rights and to promote transport equity.KeywordsGender structureTravel behaviourGender differenceTransport developmentBeijing
This research developed an agent-based model that evaluates the impact of neighborhood design on travel behavior while accounting for habit formation, social interactions, various levels of information provision, and awareness of transport and land use system changes. The developed model employs a framework that integrates random utility maximization theory with reinforcement learning concepts to account for the bounded rationality and knowledge learning process. Moreover, the model utilizes the diffusions of innovations theory to simulate how agents propagate information across family members and co-workers. It also adds a time dimension to the modal shift process, which could be used to indicate the relative duration to reap the full benefits of proposed scenarios. The model was applied to a neighborhood in Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada, to assess the impact on travel behavior of the SMARTer growth principles. The results showed that retrofitting non-motorized networks has more impact on modal shift than retrofitting road networks. This implies that infrastructure investments related to providing more accessibility for non-motorized users may be more socially and sustainably profitable than investments in policies targeting auto users. In addition, the results revealed that land use policies led to higher modal shift to non-motorized modes compared to retrofitting the transportation network, which highlights the importance of integrating land use and transportation planning. Similarly, the results demonstrated that transportation demand management policies can provide a positive stimulus to commuters to maintain familiarity with active transportation (AT) modes, which led in the presented case study to an increase in AT modal share.
La voiture est le mode de transport le plus utilisé pour les déplacements quotidiens (63 % des déplacements quotidiens en France se font en voiture). Néanmoins, l’usage fréquent de la voiture est une source importante d’inactivité physique et est associé à une majeure émission des polluants de l’air et de gaz à effet de serre. Inversement, l’usage quotidien de la mobilité active et durable (le vélo, la marche à pied, les transports en commun et le covoiturage) est associé à une majeure activité physique, à une moindre émission de polluants de l’air et à une moindre empreinte carbone. C’est pour ces raisons qu’une diversité des mesures a été mise en place pour réduire l’usage de la voiture et augmenter l’usage de la mobilité active et durable : des leviers durs ciblant le changement du contexte géographique et économique des individus et des leviers doux ciblant le changement des facteurs principalement psychologiques comme l’intention ou l’attitude vis-à-vis de la mobilité active (des interventions de changement des comportements). La mise en place de ces mesures implique une connaissance approfondie des facteurs influençant la mobilité active et durable. Or, seulement quelques études semblent avoir mobilisé plus d’un cadre disciplinaire pour étudier la mobilité. Par ailleurs, les leviers mis en place dans le passé présentent des limites méthodologiques et théoriques : peu d’études ayant mobilisé des cadres méthodologiques robustes, peu d’études ayant suivi le changement de mobilité au-delà de 6 mois de l’étude, peu d’études mentionnant les théories mobilisées lors du choix des leviers. La question centrale de ce travail doctoral était de mieux comprendre les facteurs associés à la mobilité active et durable afin de proposer un protocole d’étude de changement des comportements de mobilité (vers une mobilité plus active et plus durable) fondée sur les théories scientifiques. Pour cela, cette thèse a combiné des approches psychologiques et géographiques et une diversité de méthodologies (des enquêtes, des entretiens individuels, des focus groups, une étude pilote). Les principaux résultats de ce travail doctoral indiquent que (a) la mobilité active et durable est indépendamment associée à des facteurs géographiques, à des facteurs sociodémographiques et à des facteurs psychologiques, (b) l’association entre certains facteurs géographiques et certains facteurs sociodémographiques et la mobilité active et durable peut être modérée par certains facteurs psychologiques, (c) l’étude ciblant le changement de mobilité (une étude contrôlée randomisée proposant six mois d’accès au transport, des conseils de mobilité personnalisés et des techniques motivationnelles comme la fixation d’objectifs et l’élaboration d’un plan d’action) est réalisable et fidèle lorsqu’elle est implémentée sur le terrain, (d) la formation proposée à l’équipe responsable de l’implémentation de l’étude semble être efficace pour augmenter leur efficacité de soi vis-à-vis de l’implémentation de l’étude et leurs connaissances dans le domaine de la mobilité et de la pollution de l’air. Les résultats de ce travail doctoral soulignent le besoin de combiner des approches interdisciplinaires afin de mieux comprendre la mobilité active et durable et afin de mieux la promouvoir.
This study aims at understanding the Mode Choice Behavior (MCB) of working population in a developing urban society with the objective of recognizing what policies can best ensure sustainable mobility for them. In case of Dhaka, both male and female share the contribution in work force but among them women are the most critical one considering socio-economic constraints. This study concentrates on studying the mode choice behavior of them. Household interview survey data were used. Women having higher income prefer non-motorized vehicle over Public Transit for work trips. Trip time and age have significant impact on mode choice preferences. For long duration trips, working women of low- and medium-income household may prefer Active Transit over any other mode depending on the trip distance. Aged working women prefer Public Transit over all other modes both trips. The study findings can help policy makers understand why comprehensive transportation planning is required while addressing heterogenous modes.
Household car ownership does not necessarily reflect the access to use car, especially if there are more licenced household members than cars in the household. The research questions are: 1) Do men and women aged 18–64 years with driving licence and living in households with at least two adults, children and a car state the access to use a car as a driver in their trips differently? 2) How much do these men and women use car and other modes in their trips in relation to stated access to a car as a driver? 3) How does the stated access to use a car affect the average daily trip frequency, travel time and trip lengths? and 4) Are there differences in household income or work status between men and women aged 18–64 years with driving licence and living in households with at least two adults, children and a car who state the access to use a car as a driver in their trips differently? The results indicate that men have access to the household car more often than women. The stated access to use car is reflected in trip modal share and in some cases trip frequencies, travel time and trip lengths. The results suggest that objective indicators for mobility possibilities, such as car ownership and driving licence ownership, should be supplemented with subjective indicators about mobility options. Beneath the objective indicators may lie groups of people who are measured to have better options for mobility than they actually have.
Parking charges are considered to be a powerful tool for managing transport demand, as parking price is one of the most important factors impacting the travel decision-making process. This paper examines and quantifies the parking price impact on parking demand due to an increase in initial parking price as well as due to the real price decrease (inflation-adjusted) over time. Revealed preference data were collected for a parking garage located in central Belgrade at three different times: before the price increase, after the price increase and after a certain period of time had passed since the price was increased. The results confirm that parking price impacts demand. However, initial price changes have become less effective in managing demand over time. Although such a pattern is typical and expected, its quantification could be of great importance when defining parking prices and predicting impacts of new prices, as well as in determining the periodicity of price changes in order to maintain desired parking occupancy levels.
A random-effects regression model is proposed for analysis of clustered data. Unlike ordinary regression analysis of clustered data, random-effects regression models do not assume that each observation is independent but do assume that data within clusters are dependent to some degree. The degree of this dependency is estimated along with estimates of the usual model parameters, thus adjusting these effects for the dependency resulting from the clustering of the data. A maximum marginal likelihood solution is described, and available statistical software for the model is discussed. An analysis of a dataset in which students are clustered within classrooms and schools is used to illustrate features of random-effects regression analysis, relative to both individual-level analysis that ignores the clustering of the data, and classroom-level analysis that aggregate the individual data.
An individual-level mixed longitudinal data set with three separate cohorts representing three generations in U.S. society is used to examine how car ownership trends have changed among young adults (18 to 24 years of age) over a 40-year period, from the mid-1960s to the mid-2000s. A multi-level, mixed model for binary car-ownership outcomes was estimated by using maximum likelihood. After controlling for factors relating to sociodemographics, personal life, location, and labor market, individuals in the past generation considered (who were young adults in the late 1990s and early 2000s) were found to be significantly more likely to enter the car market at an earlier age. In contrast to earlier generations, by the time individuals in the last generation cleared the 18- to 24-year window, they were found to have reached car ownership levels that had been predicted by earlier studies to be the saturation levels of car ownership in a society. Minorities made greater progress in rates of car ownership between the late 1960s and the early 1980s compared with nonminorities; however, increases in the rates of car ownership slowed for minorities in the most recent generation. Young adults in urban areas led those in rural areas in the earlier generations on car ownership rates but fell behind their rural counterparts in the last generation considered. Across all three generations, vehicle ownership was lower among the unemployed compared with the employed. The differential between employed and unemployed increased with each successive generation and was almost 30% in the last generation considered.
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 implications of long commuting for individuals and households in their daily living and practice.
The overriding aim of the thesis is to update and deepen existing knowledge about commuting among women and men. A related ambition is also to derive knowledge that could serve an urban and regional policy and planning that advances transport systems and infrastructures better suited for women and their access to the labour market, as well as more equal living conditions for women and men.
The thesis is based on two empirical studies, one quantitative and one qualitative. The statistical study uses Swedish national travel survey data covering the periods 1994-95 and 2005-06 and focuses on changes over time in women’s and men’s commuting. The qualitative study is based on twenty in depth interviews with parents with small children living in the Gothenburg urban region, being highly skilled with specialized labour markets, and recently having moved to a new residential location. This study investigates the crucial role of work trips in households’ daily life and asks what women and men perceive as important when decisions affecting travel distance, travel time and mode of transport (travel speed) are taken. The theoretical approach of the thesis is based on time geography and theories of mobility, accessibility and gender.
Results from the statistical study show that gender gaps in work trips, as regards distance and speed of travel, have converged slightly over the period. However, women still commute much shorter distances than men do, thus having less spatial reach and access to the labour market. Women and men have equivalent commuting times, implying that men in general use faster means of transport than women. The overall (national) pattern of
convergence hides regional variation. A distinct pattern of convergence between the sexes occurs in the Malmö
region, while divergence occurs in the Gothenburg region. Regression analyses show that several aspects related to the individual, and to her environment, affect the work trip distance and time in different ways for women and men. For example, having small children associates with reduced trip time for women, and increased trip distance and time among men, other important factors held constant.
Results from the qualitative study show how important aspects shaping the work trip are clearly gendered. For
example, the wish to have a work place near to the children is more pronounced among women. However, decisions related to the use of a car often give men priority. Also, fairly non-gendered factors shape the work trip, for example housing (location) preferences and the perception of trip time as being useful or not. Work trips made by public transport are experienced as a relief by those who can use the time on board for purposeful activities (e.g., work or rest), but as a burden by those who have no such opportunity. The consequences of long work trips for the household members, as regards household work and caring as well as individual’s free-time activities, depend on type of gender contract of the household as well as possibilities to use certain space-time strategies in everyday life.
In conclusion, the study shows that Swedes are moving towards more gender equal commuting, but at a very slow pace. At the household level, development depends on the how gender contracts are negotiated, and how societal structures (regarding work locations and supply of public transportation, for example) constrain any decision shaping work related mobility.
Cross-national trends in paid and unpaid work time over the last 40 years reveal a slow and incomplete convergence of women’s and men’s work patterns. A simplistic extrapolation would indicate a 70—80 year process of gender convergence, with the year 2010 representing an approximate mid-point. However, in conformity with the expectations of gender theory, time use data show that gender segregation in domestic work is quite persistent over time. Women still do the bulk of routine housework and caring for family members while men have increased their contributions disproportionately to non-routine domestic work, suggesting that gender ideologies and the associated ‘doing’ of gender in interaction remain important features of the division of domestic labour. The effects of institutional barriers are also apparent, with differential changes in women’s proportional contribution to routine housework and caring activities related to different national policy clusters.
This paper analyzes households’ decision to change their car ownership level in response to actions/decisions regarding mobility issues and other household events. Following recent literature on the importance of critical events for mobility decisions, it focuses on the relationship between specific events (e.g. childbirth and buying an extra car), rather than trying to explain the status of car ownership from a set of stationary explanatory variables. In particular, it is hypothesized that changes in household car ownership level take place in response to stressors, resulting from changed household needs or aspirations. The study includes a broad range of events. Apart from changes in work status, employer and residential location, it analyzes demographic events such as household formation and childbirth. Also, it scrutinizes the temporal sequence in which chains of related events are most likely to occur. To this end, data from a retrospective survey that records respondents’ car ownership status, as well as residential and household situation over the past 20 years are used. A panel analysis has been carried out to disentangle typical relationships. The results suggest that strong and simultaneous relationships exist between car ownership changes and household formation and dissolution processes. Childbirth and residential relocation invoke car ownership changes. Changes are also made in anticipation of future events such as employer change and childbirth. Childbirth is associated with increasing the number of cars, whereas the effect of employer change goes the opposite way. Job change increases the probability of car ownership change in the following year.
This paper studies travel mode choice with a focus on car use in car deficient households from a gender perspective. Car deficient households are defined as households with more drivers than cars. We derive some key hypotheses from the literature and use the German Mobility Panel 1994–2008 to simultaneously test some of these hypotheses in a pooled data approach with cluster robust regression techniques. We find support for the social roles hypothesis which claims that mode choice may be impacted by the gendered roles a person takes in a household. Participation in paid work does not systematically affect car use more strongly than participation in unpaid work. Thus, there is no support for the economic power hypothesis which claims that car access is a function of intrahousehold economic power. The strong effect of ’sex’ leads us to conclude that there must be more behind gender differences in mode choice than just social roles. Gender differences in travel mode choice even in households with as many cars as drivers suggest that preferences may be at play. The paper concludes with an outlook on further research.
This paper suggests the need for a broader view of `gender and transport' by presenting a study of gender differences in car use for maintenance travel. Although many more women are now entering the labour force than a few decades ago, they still have to undertake the larger share of household-related work. The main objective of this paper is to assess the impact of these changing gender roles on travel patterns and in particular on car use for maintenance travel. We used the survey and trip diary data of 949 respondents living in two urban and two suburban neighbourhoods of the Cologne metropolitan area. The empirical findings suggest that labour market and maintenance activities influence car use in different directions. While parenthood reduces the odds of car use by women, it increases men's car use. Labour force participation on the other hand, especially when part-time, intensifies car use for both genders. In short, a levelling influence of paid work and a traditionalizing influence of parenthood regarding car use for maintenance travel was found.
In 2007, Germany enacted a radical new parental leave benefit scheme that grants parents 67 percent of their previous income, and includes two “daddy months.” In this paper, we use data from the German Microcensus for the period 1999 to 2009 to explore how this reform has changed fathers’ use of parental leave. We find strong overall increase in parental leave usage among men. Two groups of men in particular changed their behavior: highly educated men and fathers who are on fixed-term employment contracts.
In this article, I review the issues posed 20 years ago in my model of the historical institutionalization of the life course. I (a) recapitulate the claim that the life course has become one of the major institutions of contemporary societies; (b) discuss what has been learned in the meantime, both with respect to the dynamics of social change and to how the sociology of the life course is able to conceptualize them; (c) examine current trends toward an erosion of the institutionalized life course and the structural anchors that keep it in place; and (d) focus on life course politics and their effects on the future of the life course.
This study examines a model of travel mode choice that is able to explain gender differences in the willingness to reduce car use. By means of a survey among 187 inhabitants of a German city, the hypothesis is tested that women are more willing to reduce car use (intention to reduce car use, preference for public transport, and actual travel mode choice for a given trip) because of their stronger ecological norms and weaker car habits. Results confirm women’s greater willingness and the mediating role of norm and habit in the intention to reduce car use and in the actual travel mode choice but not with regard to the preference rating. The intention to reduce car use is mainly influenced by the ecological norm, whereas actual travel behavior is more strongly influenced by habit.
In this article, I analyse housework conflict cross-nationally using a unique multi-level data set that pairs the 2004 European Social Survey data for respondents in 25 nations with societal measures of gender equality. At the individual-level, I test two theoretical approaches to subjective housework conflict: the distributive justice and relative resources perspectives. The results support both of these theories for men and women. At the country-level, I test the relationship between housework conflict and two country-level measures: societal gender equality and rates of full-time female labor force participation. For men and women in countries with high rates of full-time female labour force participation, the relationship between housework conflict and gender equality is negative. For men and women in countries with limited access to the labour force, the relationship between housework conflict and gender equality is positive. These results suggest a dynamic relationship between country context and individual negotiations over housework.
Over the last few years, travel-behavior researchers have generally acknowledged the importance of habits and key events in understanding travel-behavior changes. The purpose of this study is to contribute to the evolving research field of mobility biographies. With a retrospective, qualitative survey, 20 parents of small children are questioned about key events affecting their travel behavior and in particular the role of childbirth in this respect. The findings reveal that the commonly expected car-dependency after childbirth is only one pattern among others such as the stability or even increase of green mode use.
Introduction
This chapter looks at transportation in the US through the lens of a women’s rights perspective, challenging transportation providers, funders and regulators to consider and assess impacts on women in the community in planning, research and regulation. The chapter discusses policy approaches that create parallels to civil rights laws in the US, as well as social exclusion theory, community and social impact assessment procedures, avoidance and mitigation of damage, and valuing women’s transportation. It makes recommendations on where changes should be made to existing policy and practice. It presents a case study of successful implementation in the field and describes what a new feminist paradigm for transportation might look like.
An historical perspective
An historical perspective reveals that transportation has been used to subjugate women historically and to the present day. Transportation can serve as a method of securing freedom, equity and an increase in rights and liberties to women. Examples can be seen in the developments in the right to travel cases that gave women the right to move from state to state in the US and to secure welfare benefits in their new communities (see Shapiro v Thompson, 394 US 618, 1969, and subsequent US Supreme Court cases).
Cars were marketed to women early in the development of the automobile, but these early electric cars had limited range based on the notion that women did not need to travel beyond the sphere of the home. Institutional sexism strongly relates to women’s history in transportation. To this day, we are plagued by the stereotyping of, and jokes about, women drivers. Women in the sphere of transportation are also often stereotyped in culture and societal attitudes and images.
Folk, blues, and rock’n’roll songs provide a telling example of a misogynist attitude toward women. Blues singer Robert Johnson generally displayed misogynist attitudes toward the women in his songs (Lemon, nd, para 2):
In songs such as Terraplane Blues, Johnson shows a misogynist attitude when he uses the sexual metaphor of a car as a woman’s body. In Terraplane Blues, Johnson speaks of all the things he plans to do to this woman, even though it appears that she is not interested in doing anything with him.
IntroductionGeneralized Linear Models (GLMs)Generalized Estimating Equations (GEE) modelsGEE EstimationExampleSummary
This chapter summarizes several studies which were designed to address some of the gaps in our knowledge of the travel behaviour of women at various stages in their life. For women in the labour force the focus was on the impact of marital status, the number and age of children, and household and childcare responsibilities on travel patterns. For elderly women the focus was the impact of having either a driver's licence or a spouse with a licence. It first analyses the travel behaviour of full-time employed women, comparing single and married mothers, and evaluating the transportation implications of having children of different ages, examining the whole pattern of their daily trips - not just their work trips. The bulk of the material refers to women in the US, but to gain some insights into the significance of cultural context in shaping women's travel patterns, it introduces comparative data from the Netherlands. Then I focus on elderly women in the US, comparing single and married women, and contrasting those who do not drive - soon a small minority of that population - with those who do. -from Author
This paper investigates trends in the travel behaviour of young adults in Germany, France, Great Britain, Japan, Norway, and the USA over the past few decades with a focus on car availability and car travel. The trend analysis relies on micro-data from over 20 National Travel Surveys from the study countries dating back to the mid-1970s. The analysis of the survey data is supplemented by official statistics on licence holding. On this basis, this paper compiles a body of evidence for changes in mobility patterns among young adults in industrialized countries over the past few decades. The findings indicate that since the turn of the millennium, access to cars, measured in terms of drivers' licences and household car ownership, has decreased in most study countries—especially for men. Moreover, average daily car travel distance has decreased in most study countries, again especially for men. In France, Japan, and most significantly in the USA, the decrease in car travel has led to a reduction in total everyday travel by young travellers. In Great Britain, the decline in car travel was partly, and in Germany fully, compensated by an increased use of alternative modes of transport.
Geographers and others have long since examined the distribution of paid work, childcare and housework within households and have more recently begun to explore the various effects of Internet use on everyday life and digital inequalities along lines of gender and other social markers. These lines of inquiry have so far remained largely separate and this paper brings them together by analysing the interrelations between the Internet and the gender division of household labour. Multi‐group structural equation modelling is applied to dedicated survey data collected among heterosexual couples in Columbus (Ohio, USA). The results demonstrate that Internet use is gendered in many ways. Variations in Internet use are explained by a broader range of factors for women than for men, and an unequal division of domestic responsibilities within the household constrains women's Internet use but not men's. Overall, however, the relations between Internet use and the gender division of household labour are modest. The latter is related in different ways for women and men to the residential location, the household situation, the employment situation and gender‐specific interactions among paid work, childcare and housework.
The paper studies gender differences in activity patterns and activity spaces (in terms of trip frequencies and travel distances to various activities) over the period 1976 to 2008. The results show gender convergence both in trip frequencies and travel distances. The growth of activity spaces is less pronounced in large cities than in small towns and municipalities, supporting the hypotheses of sustainability in transport development in the cities and of diverging patterns in travel trends between cities and the countryside. A cohort analysis of commute and shopping trip distances shows cohort effects as well as changes over the life-course. Again, the results reflect increasingly egalitarian gender roles. Der Beitrag untersucht Geschlechterunterschiede in Aktivitätsmustern und Aktionsräumen (im Sinne von Wegehäufigkeiten und zurückgelegten Distanzen für verschiedene Wegezwecke) im Zeitraum 1976 bis 2008. Die Ergebnisse zeigen die Konvergenz der Aktivitätsmuster und der zurückgelegten Wegelängen zwischen den Geschlechtern. Das Wachstum der Aktionsräume ist in den Großstädten deutlich geringer als in Mittelstädten und kleinen Gemeinden. Dies stützt die These der Nachhaltigkeit der Verkehrsentwicklung in den Städten sowie der 'Schere' der Verkehrsentwicklung zwischen Stadt und Land. Eine Kohortenanalyse für Berufs-und Einkaufswegelängen zeigt Kohorteneffekte sowie biografische Veränderungen im Lebenslauf. Auch darin spiegelt sich ein zunehmend egalitäres Geschlechterverhältnis.
The space-time fixity constraint that binds activities to specific times and places has long been considered an important concept in transportation research. However, only few studies to date have directly examined differences in the space-time fixity of everyday activities. Based on the activity-based approach to travel behavior, and using space-time activity diary data collected in Columbus (Ohio, USA), this study investigates how variations in fixity levels are associated with activity type, other activity attributes, and the personal, household and geographical background of the person pursuing the activity. It considers whether these associations differ between men and women in order to advance our understanding of how space-time constraints operate differently in the everyday lives of men and women. The results suggest that context matters: fixity levels depend not just on activity type but also on when, where, for how long, with whom an activity is conducted, as well as on the background of the person initiating the activity, and some of these effects differ systematically between men and women.
One of the more consistent findings from research discussing the construction of gender ideology is that becoming a parent has a traditionalizing influence on ideology. Most research has focused on the number and/or timing of births as proxies for whatever the process is — that is, having children tends to lead to a greater likelihood of holding traditional beliefs about gender. This paper focuses on unmarried women's experiences during pregnancy and birth to determine whether and how they contribute to gender ideology construction. Using data from the 1995 National Survey of Family Growth (N = 1,529), we find that the physical experience of becoming a mother, both through pregnancy and the birthing of a child, have no influence on unmarried first time mothers' gender ideologies. Therefore, our findings suggest that the social practice of mothering is likely the mechanism through which having children yields a traditionalizing influence on women's gender ideologies.
Using large-scale panel data, this paper examines how social contacts change across the life course. Fixed-effects regression models are used to ascertain within-person changes over a 12-year period. The models show that marriage does not affect weaker ties whereas it does change the nature of the stronger ties that people have: friendships become less important and more. Parenthood entails a shift toward more local ties: there are negative effects on friendships and acquaintances but these are compensated by positive effects on neighbors. Divorce and widowhood have positive effects on contact and support, but the effects are more pronounced for widowhood, especially for women. Age effects suggest a decline in the size of most subnetworks combined with increased support from relatives but not from friends, neighbors, and acquaintances. The findings are discussed in light of a theoretical framework which distinguishes the roles of needs, opportunities, and alternatives.
The question raised in this paper is in which ways the urban structure interacts with or creates different conditions for activities made by men and women. To explore this question the paper focuses on the travel to work of married couples in an urban context, how they adapt time use and deal with the spatial choices of work places and the allocation of transport resources. The empirical analyses are based on a personal travel study from the Oslo-region in 1990/91. Women work closer to their homes than the husbands, and have less choice on the geographical labour market. In families with one car, the husband has the first choice. Women have more often tasks on the way to and from work related to household responsibilities.
This paper studies changes in people’s travel mode use from one year to the next. It is informed by three distinct discourses: travel behaviour change, the mobility biographies approach, and cohort analysis. The data used is the German Mobility Panel (GMP) 1994–2008 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 various sociodemographic and spatial attributes are controlled. Due to the non-independent nature of panel observations, a cluster-robust regression approach is used. The findings suggest that behind the aggregate stability in travel mode use over time there is much change ‘under the surface’, induced by life course changes, individual and household sociodemographic, and spatial context. The changes found induced by life course related key events favour the notion of mobility biographies. However, taken over all key events seem to be relatively loosely associated with mode use changes. Nonetheless, various significant effects of baseline variables suggest that mode use may change even in the absence of a key event.
This study explores mainstream trends and countertrends in the development of spatial mobility in the
Swedish population. Tracing incipient change in travel behaviour is important for understanding the preconditions
for social and environmental sustainability. We use data from the Swedish national travel surveys,
conducted intermittently over almost 30 years (1978–2006), covering both daily and long-distance
mobility. International travel is included for the last decade. With respect to mainstream trends, the
results primarily concern the continuation of the spatial extension of overall mobility and of the motorization
and individualization of travel modes, as well as an upward convergence between women’s and
men’s mobility. When it comes to countertrends, substantial reductions in daily mobility and long-distance
domestic travel are observed among the young
This study examines whether intergenerational continuity exists in the demographic
trajectories of parents and children during young adulthood. A new indicator to measure
similarity, based on the idea that trajectories are more similar, the more subtrajectories
they have in common, is compared to a similarity indicator based on optimal matching.
Using data on parents and children from the NSFH, it is shown that intergenerational
transmission of demographic trajectories exists, despite the dramatic changes in such
trajectories in the last half-century. Continuities in demographic patterns across
generations to a large extent result from continuities in general societal processes that
structure the life course, but processes that operate within the family itself are important
as well. Substantive and methodological implications of the findings are discussed.
Keywords: sequence analysis; young adulthood; cohort change; intergenerational transmission; demographic trajectories
This article analyses the changing division of housework between husbands and wives in western Germany. Using representative longitudinal data from the Bamberg Panel Study of Married Couples, the authors analyse how the division of household labour changes over the first 14 years of marriage. In particular, they assess when and under what conditions the husband’s share of traditionally ‘female’ housework increases or decreases. They consider shifts in spouses’ employment hours, relative earnings and family transitions as time-varying predictor variables in event-history models. It is found that almost half of all newlyweds begin by sharing household tasks equally. But over the course of marriage, the husband’s contribution to housework declines significantly, mostly independent of spouses’ income or working hours. The husband increasing his share of housework is uncommon, even when the wife works longer hours or realizes higher earnings. Traditional gender norms seem to trump earnings. This is particularly true when children are born.
Many studies have shown that women work closer to home than do men, but few have probed the reasons for this persistent finding and none has done so at the metropolitan scale or considered the link between journey-to-work patterns and the occupational segregation of women. We first review the various possible reasons for women's shorter journeys to work and then examine each of these with data from the Baltimore, Maryland SMSA. We compare the work-trip distances and times of 303 employed women with those of 484 men, drawn from the 1977 Baltimore Travel Demand Data. As expected, women's work trips are significantly shorter than men's in both travel time and distance Women's lower incomes, their concentration in female-dominated occupations, and their greater reliance on the bus and auto passenger modes all help to explain their shorter work trips Male-female differences in part— versus full-time work status, occupational group, and, most surprisingly, household responsibility, did not, however, contribute to explaining observed gender differences in joumey-to-work patterns. We also found that the difference in the home and work locations of women and men could explain women's shorter work trips. A higher proportion of women than of men live and work in the central city, where journey to work distances are shorter, and there is some evidence that female-dominated employment opportunities are more uniformly distributed over the SMSA whereas male-dominated jobs are clustered in certain districts. We conclude that working women are more sensitive to distance than men are for reasons related more to their mobility than to their "dual roles" of wage earner/homemaker Also, because of women's sensitivity to commuting distance, the location of different types of employment opportunities is likely to play a role in the occupational segregation of women.
This article addresses the timing of family transitions in early adulthood. Theoretical and empirical analyses are used to investigate the appropriateness of the notions of destandardization, differentiation and individualization for characterizing recent changes in West German life courses. Data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP) are used for a comparison of (West German) birth cohorts and the respective timing of moving out of the parental home, first marriage and first parenthood. These transitions have, in fact, undergone a certain temporal destandardization. However, the results suggest that this destandardization is limited to certain dimensions, is clearly socially structured and is in part brought about by changing structural conditions. Furthermore, these changes in timing can be partly explained by differentiation according to education. Individualization, too, is only applicable to a certain degree and in particular to women's life courses.
The aim of this contribution is to refine explanations for inequalities in the amount of time men and women spend in paid work and housework by breaking down institutional conditions into economic circumstances, policy conditions, and cultural influences. We indicate our expectations for these macro indicators as well as for their interaction with micro level indicators. We expect, for example, that the negative effect on paid work for married women becomes stronger in more masculine countries. Using the Multinational Time Use Archive, we analysed 17 countries in the 1965-1998 period. Multilevel analyses show the importance of institutional conditions for paid work: men and women in highly developed economies and in countries with high rates of child-care facilities do more paid work, although they spend less time on paid work after having children. With respect to the influence of culture, it appears that highly educated and married women in masculine cultures do less paid work, and that married women also do more housework, than their counterparts in more feminine cultures.
This paper performs multiple regression analysis to identify a large number of determinants of commuting time and distance for Seoul residents using the 2 per cent public-use sample data tape of the 1995 Korean Population Census. Among the numerous findings, it is noted that commuting times and distances are longer for male workers, full-time salaried workers, workers with more education, home-owners and male workers in the prime earning years (over age 35). It is found that the household responsibility of childcare is an important factor for the shorter commuting of Korean married women.
Women's work is mainly divided between unpaid domestic labour and paid jobs, both reflecting their subordinate position. Most women experience a spatial discontinuity between these roles, which are performed in different places, namely home and workplace. Research points to the negative impact of home-work separation on the daily routine of employed women, especially in peripheral suburbs. This study explores the personal experience of commuting among Israeli exurban married mothers who are employed full time in the central city of the nearest metropolis. These characteristics are expected to reflect an especially heavy load on the lives of women, and thus to shape their personal experience. Findings show that women have developed positive attitudes to their commuting; mostly, they use the long trip for a mental shift, contemplation and relaxation. The women interviewed were well aware of the burden of their commuting, but they also acknowledged that their long journey affords them a 'pause' otherwise denied them in their daily routine. Although findings were drawn from a small number of interviewees, they indicate two dissonances: one among the women, who tended to minimise their hardship and focus on the more agreeable aspects of their trips; and one among researchers, who have failed to see that at least some women have the mental ability to shape their commuting into a positive experience. The positive attitudes of the women interviewed are rooted experientially, in sounds and rural landscape, and reflect the influence of territorial socialisation as part of local culture.
When Linda Babcock asked why so many male graduate students were teaching their own courses and most female students were assigned as assistants, her dean said: "More men ask. The women just don't ask." It turns out that whether they want higher salaries or more help at home, women often find it hard to ask. Sometimes they don't know that change is possible--they don't know that they can ask. Sometimes they fear that asking may damage a relationship. And sometimes they don't ask because they've learned that society can react badly to women asserting their own needs and desires. By looking at the barriers holding women back and the social forces constraining them, Women Don't Ask shows women how to reframe their interactions and more accurately evaluate their opportunities. It teaches them how to ask for what they want in ways that feel comfortable and possible, taking into account the impact of asking on their relationships. And it teaches all of us how to recognize the ways in which our institutions, child-rearing practices, and unspoken assumptions perpetuate inequalities--inequalities that are not only fundamentally unfair but also inefficient and economically unsound. © 2003 by Linda Babcock and Sara Laschever. All Rights Reserved.