Beyond ‘women and transport’: towards new geographies of gender and daily mobility

Abstract

Over the last two decades, a feminist critique of gender-blind transportation research and planning has generated a spate of research into ‘women and transport’. This article critically reviews this literature, and argues that it has come to focus on a relatively limited range of research problems (notably journey-to-work travel) at the expense of other relevant issues. An alternative approach is suggested which redefines the topic as ‘gender and daily mobility’ and incorporates it within a larger theoretical project investigating social and cultural geographies of mobility. Some areas of scholarship associated with the ‘cultural turn’ are explored to illustrate the potential for new approaches. The article then argues that future research on the topic must be based on a more systematic treatment of gender as a theoretical concept. A framework of analysis is outlined which identifies aspects of gender as a social category and symbolic code, and links it to aspects of daily mobility. The article outlines potential research questions identified through this analysis, and draws attention to a wide range of literature which may be brought to bear on the redefined topic area.