Gender gap in mobility outside home in urban India

Abstract: India has one of the highest levels of gender inequality in the world. Work participation rate of women is among the lowest with a wide gender gap. There are seclusion norms that restrict mobility of women outside home. However, transport literature in India has not explored the impact of this lack of autonomy on gender differences in travel demand. I use 2019 population-representative nationwide time-use survey of India. The dataset reported both travel and non-travel activities in 30-minute episodes over a 24-hour period. For urban residents, I analysed gender differences in trip rates and mobility rates, where the latter is defined as the percentage going out of home at least once on the reporting day. I developed gender-stratified logistic regression models at the individual level with mobility as a binary outcome. It was found that 53% of the females did not report going out of home compared to only 14% males. The mobility of females reduces steeply from adolescence to young adulthood and then remains largely stable at a low level before reducing further for older adults. No such variation is observed among males, except their mobility is also reduced among older adults. There is a clear dichotomy with women mostly participating in in-house activities while men mostly involved in out-of-home activities. Adolescence or adulthood, marriage, living with one or more household members, having an infant in the house, lower income, and less education are associated with lower likelihood of female mobility. I discuss many implications of these gender differences in mobility.