Working Women and Travel The Access of Women to Work and Community Facilities

Abstract

Because the existing infrastructure no longer fits the travel demands of women with multiple roles at work and in the family, there may be consequences for access to employment and to community facilities. While comparisons of travel patterns of women to those of other groups have shown fewer and shorter trips, and a lesser use of automobiles, a newer indicator, travel time over the twenty-four hour day, reveals that working women with children may have shorter time durations for work, household, and leisure trips. Since travel is traded off as a discretionary activity in favor of obligatory time requirements, compensatory policies should be designed to release time for travel directly by alteration of work and household organization, and indirectly by changes in land use and transportation programs.