A systematic literature review on women’s daily mobility in the Global North

ABSTRACT

Since the early 1980s, the differences between the daily mobility patterns of men and women have attracted increasing interest from scholars and policymakers. Academic literature has revealed that women in advanced countries tend to travel shorter distances, make more daily trips, use cars less frequently, and are more willing to adopt sustainable travel behaviours than men. However, with changing family and labour market conditions, new trends are emerging, which open avenues for further investigation. Based on these premises, this study systematically reviews recent studies on women’s daily mobility across urban and peri-urban areas of the Global North. The studies published in the last ten years are systematized by developing an analytical framework that facilitates synthesising research findings, identifying research gaps, outlining directions for further studies in the field, and providing insights to policymakers to design initiatives for fair and inclusive mobility.

KEYWORDS:

• Daily mobility
• women
• Global North
• boundary conditions
• mobility antecedents

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The term gender typically refers to behavioural, social, and psychological characteristics of men and women (see, e.g., Pryzgoda & Chrisler, 2000). As we discuss in section 4, this review is based on a binary view of gender (i.e., men vs. women).

2 The so-called Global North includes the economically advanced countries of North America, Europe, Israel, Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand The full list of Global North countries is reported here: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/global-north-countries.

3 Sectorial segregation is measured through the participation of women and men in education, human health, and social work activities. Flexible working time arrangements and job prospects measure the quality of work.

4 These data are from the Gender Quality Index produced by the European Institute for Gender Equality in 2021 (https://eige.europa.eu/gender-equality-index/2022).

5 www.scopus.com

6 Journals in the Scopus database are ranked according to the SCImago Journal Rank (SJR), which is an indicator of scientific prestige that accounts for the number of citations received by a journal and reputation of the journals where these citations originate. The first and second quartiles include the journals with the 50% highest SJR values.

7 This list of search terms was created based on discussions with academics and experts in the field. Further details on the procedure to select panelists and interview them are available from the authors upon request.

8 Note that these differences also emerged in job-related travels occuring at night (Plyushteva & Boussauw, 2020).

9 It is worth noting that travelling by public transit is usually slower than travelling by car (Kwan & Kotsev, 2015), which may explain why the two genders often show similar commuting duration even though women tend to travel shorter distances to perform their jobs.

10 The term “walking activity space” refers to the walking distance areas within which individuals move during a specific period while performing their activities.

11 https://www.e-vai.com/blog/mobility-as-a-service-che-cose-e-come-funziona, accessed on February 5th 2023.