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Total Results: 3
Refereed Journal Articles
2024
Sex Differences in Child Care Travel
FindingsEvelyn Blumenberg, Zhiyuan Yao, Madeline Wander
Child care travel is differentiated by sex: who makes such trips shapes the mode and distance to child care in relation to home and, for working parents, to jobs. To better understand the relationship between sex and child care travel, we analyze child care trips in California by sex while controlling for a variety of demographic and socio-economic factors. We find women are responsible for over 70% of all child care trips. Though most child care trips are taken by automobile, women are more likely to walk kids to child care centers than men. We also find that households choose child care centers that are closer to home than workplaces.
Refereed Journal Articles
2022
Who’s in the Driver Seat? Gender and the Division of Car Use in Auto-deficit Households
Transportation Research Part A: Policy and PracticeEvelyn Blumenberg, Andrew Schouten, Anne Brown
We examine the role of gender in access to household resources, in particular the household automobile. Drawing on data from the 2012 California Household Travel Survey, we isolate the determinants of vehicle use within dual-earner, dual-driver, heterosexual households in which drivers share a single vehicle. We test four gender-related hypotheses: the role of disparities in economic power, practical necessity related to the household division of labor, gender norms, and gender preferences.
We find that practical necessity—the amount of time that spouses spend on household-serving or work-related activities—is the primary determinant of automobile use for both men and women. In contrast to previous research, we find that women have substantially more exclusive access to the household vehicle than their male partners. Rather than a measure of equality, this finding reflects the persistence of the gender division of household labor and the role of the car in its maintenance. The study underscores the broader need for policies to equalize gender roles both within and between the home and the workplace, as well as a role for transportation policies that serve the needs of household members who do not have primary use of the household car.
Book Chapters
2020
Why Women Still Need Automobiles
Engendering Cities. Designing Sustainable Spaces for AllEvelyn Blumenberg
Engendering Cities examines the contemporary research, policy, and practice of designing for gender in urban spaces. Gender matters in city design, yet despite legislative mandates across the globe to provide equal access to services for men and women alike, these issues are still often overlooked or inadequately addressed. This book looks at critical aspects of contemporary cities regarding gender, including topics such as transport, housing, public health, education, caring, infrastructure, as well as issues which are rarely addressed in planning, design, and policy, such as the importance of toilets for education and clothes washers for freeing-up time. In the first section, a number of chapters in the book assess past, current, and projected conditions in cities vis-à-vis gender issues and needs. In the second section, the book assesses existing policy, planning, and design efforts to improve women’s and men’s concerns in urban living. Finally, the book proposes changes to existing policies and practices in urban planning and design, including its thinking (theory) and norms (ethics).
The book applies the current scholarship on theory and practice related to gender in a planning context, elaborating on some critical community-focused reflections on gender and design. It will be key reading for scholars and students of planning, architecture, design, gender studies, sociology, anthropology, geography, and political science. It will also be of interest to practitioners and policy makers, providing discussion of emerging topics in the field.