Identify and discuss some the major gender differences in the transport needs and uses. What can policy makers do to make sure policies are equitable?

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GENDER AND ECONOMICS

Identify and discuss some the major gender differences in the transport needs and uses. What can policy makers do to make sure policies are equitable?

There are significant differences in the needs and uses of transport between men and women. This is due to the fact that women’s employment, unlike that of men, is domestic and household based, which means that their employment tasks take place within  specific spatial and temporal arrangements-the residence.

It is difficult for women to combine domestic roles and paid work-especially because of the fact that employers have strong negative stereotypes of women’s mobility behaviour which discourage them from employment of women. Women are discriminated against so much so that in the issue of access to company cars, research done by Potter and Cousins, 1983, Greico, 1986, on the Docklands shows that out of those employers offering company cars to employees, not one was in the possession of a woman. Many women feel that they have to “run faster just to stay in place.”

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The London Docklands also encountered difficulties employing female clerical and secretarial labour because of poor quality public transport. And also because of the absence of local shopping facilities.

Women’s employment is typically closer to the home and requires less business travel. Thus women’s paid work generates shorter trips and greater dependence on public transport than men’s paid work (Turner and Niemeier). Part of the reason why “women’s work is never done” is due to the fact that it is interrupted so often. Women combine commutes to work with trips to the dry-cleaners, grocery store, day-care centre whilst ...

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