What Explains the Gender Gap in Schlepping? Testing Various Explanations for Gender Differences in Household-Serving Travel

Brian D. Taylor, Kelcie Ralph and Michael Smart

Social Science Quarterly, 2015, vol. 96, issue 5, 1493-1510

Abstract: type="main">

Many gender differences in travel have begun to converge. Has convergence occurred for household-serving travel, which constitutes a very large and growing share of all trips? Moreover, what explains the division of household-serving travel in heterosexual couples? In answering these questions, we test the salience of three theories about the gendered division of household labor: (1) time availability, (2) microeconomic, and (3) gender socialization.

Using data from the American Time Use Survey (ATUS) from 2003 to 2012, we calculated the female-to-male ratio of household-serving trips in several types of households (i.e., singles vs. couples and male vs. female breadwinner households).

There was some empirical support for each theory, but we find the most consistent and compelling evidence for gender socialization. We observe substantial gender differences in child- and household-serving trips apart from household formation; even in households where women earn more, are better educated, or work more hours than their partners, women still make about half again as many child-serving and grocery-shopping trips as their male partners.

Despite dramatic changes in women's labor force participation over the past half-century, the gender division of household-serving travel remains strong.

Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (13)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1111/ssqu.12203 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:socsci:v:96:y:2015:i:5:p:1493-1510

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0038-4941

Access Statistics for this article

Social Science Quarterly is currently edited by Robert L. Lineberry

More articles in Social Science Quarterly from Southwestern Social Science Association
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().