As Virginia Slims cigarettes famously put it in the late 1960′s, “you’ve come a long way, baby.” Indeed, in many ways the last century has witnessed terrific progress toward gender equality in our society.
Women can now vote and are free to wear pants without provoking a social scandal. At the turn of the 20th century, if you visited a doctor, there was only a five percent chance he would be a she; today, women constitute half (and climbing) of the medical-school population. And for what it’s worth, I now report to the UCLA Urban Planning department’s “chair” instead of its “chairman” and am represented by a Los Angeles city “councilmember” instead of a “councilman.”
In some ways, transportation is no exception to this leveling process. In the early days, the streets were male territory and the art of driving was a male preserve. “Woman driver” jokes were extremely common in my grandparents’ generation and as late as the early 1950′s only about 40 percent of women had a driver’s license (gated).
But despite all our efforts to create a gender-blind society, even in the 21st century sex plays an important role. Indeed, the conclusion of the slogan “you’ve come a long way, baby” ironically demonstrates that women had not come quite as long a way as they might have hoped. Even now, important gender differences persist, and they show up quite clearly in the realm of transportation.
For example, consider the commute to and from work. Using data from the American Housing Survey, UCLA’s Randall Crane found that, as of 2005, male drivers averaged a 14.1 mile commute and women an 11.8 mile one (gated). Males spent 23.5 minutes getting to work while females averaged only 21.1 minutes.
Why the difference? And is it narrowing over time, as we would expect if women are inexorably marching to greater equality?
There are sharp disparities in other areas as well. For example, while there is little difference in the number of trips women and men take on a daily basis, women’s trips are shorter, are undertaken for different reasons, and are arranged in more complex patterns than men’s.
The differences extend to the professional world. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, fewer than five percent of “driver/sales workers” and truck drivers are women, and only about 13 percent of cab drivers and chauffeurs are.
What’s more, the “woman driver” stereotype hasn’t quite deserted us entirely; as Tom Vanderbilt reported in his book Traffic, men and woman are more likely to honk at woman drivers than male ones. And, perhaps surprisingly, University of Washington sociologist Pepper Schwartz reports that in 9 of 10 households that identify themselves as “feminist,” the man does most of the driving when both partners are in the car.
Over the next several posts I’ll look at these issues. In what ways do the travel behaviors of men and women differ, and why? Are these differences good for women, or bad? Do they arise from choice or necessity? Are they best explained by gender alone, or do other factors like family structure or age lie at the root of the question? Are the differences between men’s and women’s travel going away any time soon? And what, if anything, should be done about them?
Surprisingly enough, in the past there has been some resistance to the very concept of considering women’s travel separately from men’s. When the first conference devoted specifically to this issue convened in the late 1970′s, George Will wrote a disapproving article denouncing the endeavor.
The topic has found more acceptance in recent years, but as with any consideration of behavior and gender, it is bound to push a few buttons. I’ll do my best to avoid Larry Summersing myself, but in the next few posts I’ll pass on the straight dope on what contemporary scholarship says about these questions. So tune in next time, and read the stuff George Will doesn’t want you to know.
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“Women ~ are free to wear pants without provoking a social scandal.”
Unless they’re Hilary Clinton and running for president.
“men and woman are more likely to honk at woman drivers than male ones. ”
That might mean people are more wary of provoking men than they are of women.
I’m a woman in a feminist household whose husband does almost all of the driving. He likes to have the opportunity to bob and weave at will, and I prefer to read, listen to music, and generally focus on other things than traffic. I think that differences in driving time between genders (at least for younger people) result from different preferences and not negative stereotypes about woman drivers. For one thing, hasn’t everybody heard that insurance companies charge smaller premiums to women than to men, because men are more likely to get in an accident? In my experience, women are much more likely to look for ways to integrate outings with a walk or bike ride, and men tend to want to just get in the car and go.
One thing to keep in mind when making assumptions about things like households where the men do most of the driving is that — and this is obviously a gender stereotype, but not a particularly negative or surprising one — more men actually like driving.
I’m a woman who really likes to drive, particularly on rural undivided highways where I can play catch and pass with the traffic in front of me. But I’m far and away an exception. The women in my peer group aren’t afraid to drive, they don’t mind driving, but for them, it’s something you do to get from point A to point B and back again, not something they like to do. Men are much more likely to smile knowingly when I talk about the zen of accelerating around a logging truck before the next curve.
And while driving to the grocery store isn’t usually all that zen, its still driving, and most men like it more than most women. It’s not anti-feminist to let the person who prefers a task do it.
A child comes running into the living room, with tears in his eyes, and hops onto his father’s lap. “Daddy,” says the child, “Mommy ran over my bike.” The father, with a knowing look in his eye, lovingly pats the child on the head and says with a stern voice, “How many times have I told you not to leave you bike on the porch?”
I learned this joke as a child less than three decades ago.
Unfortunately we don’t, I assume, have statistics on the horse and buggy era. I’d suspect a higher percentage of women drove horses in 1900 than drove cars in 1920?
I think men are more likely to drive when both partners are in the car, even in a self-described “feminist” household, because men are worse back-seat drivers. I know I am.
For example, consider the commute to and from work. Using data from the American Housing Survey, UCLA’s Randall Crane found that, as of 2005, male drivers averaged a 14.1 mile commute and women an 11.8 mile one (gated). Males spent 23.5 minutes getting to work while females averaged only 21.1 minutes.
From my own situation, when we moved, we looked only at homes that were within a certain radius of my wife’s job… as it turned out we found a home that wasn’t much farther from my home, but her job was the first priority.
The reason? The daycare is closer to her job.
Maybe the stats on the length and duration of women and men commuting had more to do with our (men’s) inability to follow directions or drive the most efficient route??