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On an Equal Footing? Comparing Commuting Patterns Across Space and Gender
... The length of time for commuting is one of the key categories that play an essential role in day-to-day mobility decision-making [5]. On the other hand, the organization of activities and the division of roles in the household significantly affects the patterns of commuting, which ultimately affects the subjective feeling of satisfaction/subjective well-being [6,7]. Traveling of any kind affects subjective experience in various ways. ...
This article deals with commuting to and from work of workers in Slovakia as a part of traveling and its impact on private life of commuters. It provides a more comprehensive view on the socio-demographic determinants which affect the travel mode choice. Furthermore, the study offers several evaluations of the impact on the subjective well-being of commuters. The aim of the article is to review demographic and economic determinants influencing the travel mode choice and to determine its impact on the subjective well-being of respondents. On a sample of approximately 1000 economically active individuals by using several statistical tests (Nominal Logistic Regression, Fisher’s Exact Test, Mann-Whitney Test, Cochran Test, McNemar Test), we identified the determinants affecting the travel mode choice of respondents, including commuting time costs, commuting financial costs, income of respondents, education, gender, type of employment and place of work. This study has also showed that respondents are the most satisfied when commuting by bicycle or on foot and the most dissatisfied when commuting by using public transport. These facts, among others, should be reflected by the creation of sustainable and “green” transport infrastructure in Slovakia.
In Sweden, there have been a surplus of men in rural areas and a surplus of women in urban areas for decades. However, the relative difference between rural and urban areas have decreased for about 70 years between the 1930s and the new millennium. We use two approaches to understand the decreasing regional gender gaps: 1. we decompose regional gender balance changes into the main components of population growth/decline i.e international net migration, internal net migration and net births. 2. We employ individual register data, estimate multinomial regressions every year 1991–2016 and analyse how the relationship between gender and the probability of moving from rural areas develops over time. We estimate separate regressions for Swedish-born and foreign-born. After controlling for traditional explanatory variables, we interpret the dichotomous gender variable as a measure of “gender norms”. The question is if we can spot gender norm trends that can help explain the decreasing regional gender gaps over time. We find that the development of net birth rates in rural areas explains the decreased gender gap between rural and urban areas since 1968 while net immigration and net internal migration have rather contributed to increasing regional gender gaps. Despite this, the multinomial regressions do not support changing relationships between gender and the probability to out-migrate from rural areas after 1990 for the Swedish-born. For foreign-born, we find evidence of decreased gender differences regarding the probability to leave rural areas. This contributes to an increased surplus of rural men because foreign-born men have an increased probability to stay in rural municipalities in comparison to women. In sum, we do not find that changing gender norms, for Swedish-born or foreign-born, can explain the decreasing gender gaps between rural and urban areas. In fact, for the foreign-born, we find the opposite.
Using single-family home transactions and commuter rail data from 2014, we estimate hedonic price models using two-stage spatial quantile regression to capture variations across price segments. The results are significant and robust across different model specifications and across the different price segments, but the price effect of proximity to a commuter train station is strongest in lower price segments of the housing market. These price segment effects are also valid for proximity to highways, as well as for several other property attributes. Results also reveal that the largest of the three regional labour markets in our study has a greater effect on prices. Furthermore, the study introduces property-specific neighbourhood data from raster data, showing that population density has a negative impact on property prices at the neighbourhood level while population size has a positive impact at the municipal level.
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.
This paper analyses the response of female labour force participation to the evolution of labour markets and policies supporting the reconciliation of work and family life. Using country-level data from the early 1980s for 18 OECD countries, we estimate the influence of labour market and institutional characteristics on female labour force participation, and full-time and part-time employment participation. The relationship (interactions, complementarity) between different policy measures is also analyzed, as well as potential variations in the influence of policies across different Welfare regimes. The results first highlight how the increase in female educational attainment, the expansion of the service sector the increase in parttime employment opportunities have boosted women’s participation in the labour force. By contrast, there is no such clear relationship between female employment rates and the growing share of public employment. Employment rates react to changes in tax rates, in leave policies, but the rising provision of childcare formal services to working parents with children not yet three years old is a main policy driver of female labour force participation. Different policy instruments interact with each other to improve overall effectiveness. In particular, the coverage of childcare services is found to have a greater effect on women’s participation in the labour market in countries with relatively high degrees of employment protection. The effect of childcare services on female full-time employment is particularly strong in Anglophone and Nordic countries. In all, the findings suggest that the effect of childcare services on female employment is stronger in the presence of other measures supporting working mothers (as, for instance paid parental leave) while the presence of such supports seems to reduce the effectiveness of financial incentives to work for second earners. The effect of cash benefits for families and the duration of paid leave on female labour force participation also vary across welfare regimes.
The question of how home and workplace are linked through commuting is at the heart of much recent work on metropolitan areas. However, the emphasis tends to be either on spatial-economic models or on the impact of empirically measured individual, household, neighborhood, and transport mode characteristics; relatively little work has focused on job characteristics and place of employment as they relate to travel to work. In this article, I investigate whether people travel different distances to access different types of job location, with particular attention to the different distances traveled by men and women. My points of reference are the major employment centers (poles) in the Montreal region. After controlling for a wide range of explanations that may account for different travel distances, I conclude that differences in commuting length between different places of work are, by and large, independent of possible explanatory factors such as residential location, economic sector, occupation, income, and participation in household earnings—some places of work generate longer commutes than others. Men and women behave differently in relation to these places: women will travel farther to access jobs in centers whereas men will not; and despite their shorter average overall commutes, women travel farther than men to reach jobs in the CBD. This suggests, at the metropolitan scale, that each job location may have its own local culture or "milieu," and that men and women react differently to them.
This paper analyzes the extent to which differences in labor force status, in household composition, and in household roles account for sex differences in workplace-residence separation. Modelling work trip length as the outcome of the choice of household residential and individual job locations, equilibrium work trip length is estimated empirically as a function of labor market, housing, and household characteristics for male and female employees in seven different household categories. Data from the 1976 Panel Survey of Income Dynamics are used. The study concludes that while sex differences in job tenure, work hours, and wages are in themselves sufficient to fully account for observed sex differences in workplace-residence separation, sex differences in household 'roles' (i.e., responses to spouses' characteristics) are of even greater importance in influencing women to work 'closer to home'.
Gender is both an archetypal and adaptive dimension of the urban condition and, thus, remains a key moving target for planning practitioners and scholars alike. This is especially true of women's growing, if not revolutionary, involvement in the economy. A familiar exception is the trip linking work and home, which has been consistently and persistently shorter for women than men. That said, new reports suggest that the gender gap in commuting time and distance may have quietly vanished in some areas. To explore this possibility, I use panel data from the American Housing Survey to better measure and explain commute trends for the entire United States from 1985 through 2005. They overwhelmingly indicate that differences stubbornly endure, with men's and women's commuting distances converging only slowly and commuting times diverging. My results also show that commuting times are converging for all races, especially for women, and women's trips to work by transit are dwindling rapidly. Thus sex continues to play an important role explaining travel, housing, and labor market dynamics, with major implications for planning practice.
I analyze the skill and age structure of commuters in 14 EU countries. Theory implies that commuters can be either more or less able than stayers, but are always less able than migrants and that they are also always older than migrants but younger than stayers. Empirically all types of commuters are younger and have higher education than non-commuters. Internal commuters are better educated and younger than cross-border commuters, education decreases while age increases with distance commuted and recent migrants are younger but also more highly educated than commuters.
This paper estimates the effects of commuting time and housing characteristics on earnings of white male, white female, and black female employees of a single company. Within all three groups, earnings increase directly with commuting time. However, these increases are significantly smaller for employees commuting from census tracts with housing characteristics indicative of lower prices for housing services. Earnings premia for commuting time, net of the interactions between commuting time and housing characteristics are positive for almost all white males. However, they are negative for many white females and most black females. If locational constraints imposed by primary workers or residential segregation restrict the residential mobility of female employees, the employer may have monopsony power. That power may enable the employer to capture the housing market benefits of longer commutes for females.
Bearing in mind that sex differences are one of the factors that influence variability of the scope and directions of commuting, the paper treats problems of commuter’s structure according to sex. Although it gives the data about total commuting according to sex (pupils, students and labor force), the emphasis has been put onto commuting patterns of economically active population due to greater number of factors, which in the case of economically active population have the impact on migratory process. Apart from the review about so-far knowledge about determinants on participation of women in commuting and on differences in directions and territorial range of commuting flows according to sex, changes in participation of women in commuting of workers in Serbia (without Kosovo and Metohija) have been analyzed, with discussion about basic characteristics of commuting flows of economically active women in Serbia.
This paper uses sub-regional data for Great Britain to analyse the determinants of spatial variations in income and productivity. We decompose the spatial variation of earnings into a productivity effect and an occupational composition effect. For the former (but not for the latter) we find a robust relationship with proximity to economic mass, suggesting that doubling the population of working age proximate to an area is associated with a 3.5% increase in productivity in that area. Proximity is measured in terms of travel time and we show that the effects decline steeply with time, ceasing to be signficant beyond approx. 80 minutes travel time.
Using data on single-family detached houses from a Norwegian region, in this paper I study the existence of gender differences in estimated labour-market accessibility between locations. Different specifications of a gravity-based job-accessibility measure are included in hedonic house-price models. I test for significant gender-related differences in the distance-deterrence parameters found in the labour-market accessibility indicator. The estimated distance-deterrence parameters are lower for women than for men. This difference is, however, not significant, given the data. The main gender-related differences relate to the spatial variation in job accessibility as measured here. The supply of relevant jobs is significantly higher for women in the administrative centres of municipalities in the area, and significantly higher for men outside these administrative centres. The attractive forces of the centres could be relevant as an explanation of differentiated gender-related commuting patterns.
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 analyses the relation between education and commuting behaviour of Dutch workers. Results show that, ceteris paribus, higher educated workers commute further, both in terms of distance and time. In addition, higher educated workers are more frequent users of public transport and of bicycles. Furthermore, we find that higher educated workers are relatively more likely to commute towards agglomerated areas and areas that pay relatively high wages, while they are more likely to live in and commute from areas with higher land rents.
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 uses national travel surveys from Sweden to examine the relationship between family situation, sex and work-related overnight travel. The results indicate that family obligations have an impact on travel activity, but that women and men differ in this respect. Cohabiting men travel more than men living alone, whereas there is no such effect among women. Having young children reduces the travel activity of women, whereas there is no consistent such effect among men. However, regardless of family situation, men travel considerably more than women and this largely reflects women’s and men’s different positions in working life. It is therefore argued that the relationship between work-related travel and family obligations involves both individual adaptation and structural factors, such as a gender-segregated labour market and ‘gender-typing’ of travel as a predominantly male activity, all of which reflect traditional gender and family role expectations.
The average U.S. male historically commutes further and longer than his female counterpart. Yet pivotal changes at home, as younger women especially increase their influence on household location and work decisions, and in the labor market, and as women's participation rates and profiles approach men's, strongly suggest that gender's influence on travel might be changing as well. Furthermore, the independent and interactive influence of other demographic factors, not least age and race, remain unclear. This study analyzes national microdata covering the past 20 years to examine both issues. We find sources of both convergence and divergence in travel behaviors by sex. The gender gap in commute length of older workers is growing, even while that of younger workers steadily closes. At the same time, racial differences in mode choice and commute times are becoming less pronounced—both by race and by gender. Thus, gendered elements of travel demand are indeed evolving, if not in predictable directions.
Although the process of European integration has facilitated labour mobility in the EU to a considerable extent, cross‐border commuting is still at a low level. We provide evidence on labour mobility in the Danish‐German border region. The objective of this paper is to investigate the recent development of cross‐border commuting in the region and whether this reflects increasing labour market integration. We re‐late the development to different theories on cross‐border labour mobility. Our results suggest that much of the pronounced growth of cross‐border commuting is caused by labour market disparities and a proceeding integration of labour markets on both sides of the border. However, an analysis of structural characteristics of cross‐border commuters and their working places indicates that the cross‐border labour market still has specific features. There are significant differences between cross‐border commuters on both sides of the border with respect to income and main branches of employment. Moreover, the analysis points to a pronounced sectoral concentration of cross‐border workers. Due to this “specialisation” there are distinct differences be‐tween the sectoral distribution of cross‐border commuters and the corresponding structure of total employment in the region.
Feminists have long known that gender and mobility are inseparable, influencing each other in profound and often subtle ways. Tackling complex societal problems, such as sustainability, will require improved understandings of the relationships between gender and mobility. In this essay I propose new approaches to the study of mobility and gender that will provide the knowledge base needed to inform policies on sustainable mobility. Early in the essay I survey the large literature on gender and mobility, teasing out what I see as two disparate strands of thinking that have remained badly disconnected from each other. One of these strands has informed understandings of how mobility shapes gender, while the other has examined how gender shapes mobility. Work on how mobility shapes gender has emphasized gender, to the neglect of mobility, whereas research on how gender shapes mobility has dealt with mobility in great detail and paid much less attention to gender. From this overview of the literature, I identify knowledge gaps that must be bridged if feminist research on gender and mobility is to assist in charting paths to sustainable mobility. I argue for the need to shift the research agenda so that future research will synthesize these two strands of thinking along three lines: (1) across ways of thinking about gender and mobility, (2) across quantitative and qualitative approaches, and (3) across places. In the final part of the essay I suggest how to achieve this synthesis by making geographic, social and cultural context central to our analyses.
This paper uses NUTS3 sub-regional data for Great Britain to analyse the determinants of spatial variations in income and productivity. We decompose the spatial variation of earnings into a productivity effect and an occupational composition effect. For the former (but not the latter) we find a robust relationship with proximity to economic mass, suggesting that doubling the population of working age proximate to an area is associated with a 3.5% increase in productivity in the area. We measure proximity by travel time, and show that effects decline steeply with time, ceasing to be important beyond approximately 80 min.
From a Swedish regional development policy perspective, increased long-distance commuting is viewed as a means for creating larger local labour markets and thus stimulating regional economic growth. One of the prerequisites for such a development is that individuals are willing to commute longer distances. In the context of a relatively peripheral and sparsely populated area in northern Sweden, this paper aims to study commuting behaviour and factors influencing individuals’ propensities to commute longer distances. Using a longitudinal set of geo-referenced data, individuals’ commuting propensities were estimated in a binary logistic regression, and significant effects were found for a range of socio-economic and demographic factors. The results also show that the local labour market’s geographical structure is important. Overall, most individuals commute within their locality of residence and women commute shorter distances than men do – a pattern that has been relatively stable since the beginning of the 1990s. This article attempts to outline causes and effects of this commuting behaviour, which are important to understand in the development of regional development policies aimed at increasing geographical labour mobility.
In this paper, we examine how individual labour market status and spatial variations in employment opportunities influence interregional job search behaviour and mobility decisions in Sweden. The econometric analysis is based on 290,000 individual observations and refers to the years 1994-95. The empirical results show that the probability of interregional labour mobility unexpectedly decreases with the accessibility to employment opportunities in neighbouring regions. As expected, the findings reveal that accessibility to job openings in surrounding regions significantly increases the likelihood of choosing commuting as the mobility mode. Moreover, the empirical findings indicate that individual unemployment experience increases the likelihood of mobility as well as migration.
Moseley M. J. and Darby J. (1978) The determinants of female activity rates in rural areas: an analysis of Norfolk parishes, Reg. Studies 12, 297--309. Rural Britain still has significantly lower female activity rates than do the urban and suburban areas. The central issue, which this paper explores, concerns whether this reflects variations in the opportunity for women to work, or in their desire to work. 'Opportunity’ factors include industrial and occupational structure and physical accessibility. 'Desire’ factors arise from the social, cultural and familial environment within which women live. For the first time, ward library data from the 1971 census allow a fine-grained spatial analysis, and attention is focused upon the rural parishes of Norfolk. Parish-level data relating to female activity rates and to potentially explanatory variables are subjected to multiple regression analysis. Levels of explanation are low but demographic and 'opportunities’ factors emerge as significant. Improved opportunities of a 'work to the workers’ nature constitute a possible policy.
Sex changes everything the recent narrowing and widening of travel differences by gender
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