It's Not Just About Wages – It's About Time
Why long journeys to work disproportionately affect mothers
It is widely acknowledged that motherhood significantly influences gender disparities in the labour market, with numerous studies focusing on the wage differences between working mothers and fathers in heterosexual couples. Despite notable strides in reducing wage inequalities in developed nations, a critical aspect often remains overlooked: the impact of time.
Time poverty
Time, a finite resource, is constantly balanced against work and parenting responsibilities. Commuting emerges as a particularly negative job attribute, as longer commute times reduce available parenting time. Prevailing gender norms, which cast women as the primary caregivers, disproportionately place the burdens of parenting on mothers. Consequently, the demands from long commutes are disproportionately stressful for women.
Figures from the UK’s Office for National Statistics reveal that women typically have shorter commutes compared to men, who are more often found travelling for over an hour to get to work. Surprisingly, the ‘gender commuting gap’ widens after the birth of the first child and intensifies significantly a decade later, resembling the pattern of the gender wage gap. This widening gap is concerning as it highlights how deep-rooted gender norms push women into homemaking roles, hindering their ability to pursue higher-paying jobs that may require longer commutes. As a result, women face significant trade-offs between career advancement and managing caregiving responsibilities, limiting their professional growth and economic independence.
Economic and Well-being tradeoffs for women
The decision to work closer to home may relieve some immediate burdens but comes with significant long-term costs. Research in Germany by Thomas Skora and colleagues found that women’s ‘motherhood wage penalty’ is partially due to reduced commuting distances, which decreases access to better-paying jobs that match their skill set.
Figure 1. Means of wage levels and commuting distances by sex and family situation in Germany (Source: Skora et al., 2020)
The increasing housing costs are driving families to move further from city centres. Combined with women’s caregiving responsibilities, this trend forces women to forgo higher wages for shorter commutes, as they cannot afford the time required to travel to workplaces in city centres. This trend particularly impacts low to middle-income families, who forgo better earnings despite possessing the required skills and experience.
The physical and mental toll of commuting is substantial. Longer commute times are linked to increased stress, obesity, and other health issues. For women, who disproportionately manage more family responsibilities, these health impacts are compounded by the stress of balancing work and family life. The burden leads women to experience time poverty, both physically and psychologically, which is further associated with anxiety, depression, and other lifestyle-related health problems.
The strain can lead to a vicious cycle of decreased job and family satisfaction. Research indicates that parents with lengthy commutes often engage less in leisure activities and report lower overall life satisfaction. Furthermore, long commuting hours indirectly impact child development by reducing both the quality and amount of time parents spend with their children. This lack of parental engagement is particularly detrimental in impoverished areas, and there is evidence suggesting that children of parents with long commutes may experience more emotional and social difficulties. Such challenges are even more pronounced for commuter marriages, in which spouses live apart for work.
Policies that aim to artificially distribute caring responsibilities alone cannot solve the problem. Societies need solutions that encourage equal, yet organic distribution of caring responsibilities. As highlighted by feminist urbanists, we need to better reassess how the current urban form perpetuates gender norms despite the significant stride towards equality made by the feminist movement. The current urban setup significantly impacts women’s commuting patterns, often necessitating complex trip-chaining. This involves multiple short journeys linked together due to the role of the primary caregiver, which includes various responsibilities beyond work, such as childcare, grocery shopping, running errands, and household management. Each of these tasks typically requires travel to multiple, often disparate locations throughout the day. As a result, women opt for shorter commutes to manage these responsibilities, which limits their access to higher-paying jobs and career advancement opportunities. This scenario underscores the inadequacies of our urban design, which fails to support equal distribution of caregiving duties and inadvertently perpetuates economic disparities between genders.
Why should we be concerned about complex trip-changing?
Urban transport systems have historically been designed with a ‘commuter model’ in mind, which assumes that the typical user travels in a simple, bidirectional pattern – home to work and back, primarily during peak commuting hours. This model aligns more closely with traditional male commuting patterns from a time when men were the primary breadwinners and travelled directly between work and home. However, women’s commutes are often more complex, involving multiple stops for childcare, grocery shopping, and other errands. This complexity isn’t a good thing because transport systems often fail to accommodate the need for flexibility in public transportation routes, frequency, and the placement of transit stops, making women’s travel patterns less efficient and more time-consuming. Given that quality transport systems support innovation, productivity, and economic growth in cities, failing to consider these varied travel demands results in significant financial losses. When women’s commutes are inefficient, it hampers their productivity and overall contribution to the economy. Therefore, urban transport must be restructured to address the diverse needs of all users, ensuring that women are not disadvantaged by outdated models of transportation planning.
The built environment of our cities mirrors the power dynamics and inequalities prevalent in our society. Therefore, it is crucial to recognise the intricate connections between social relations and the configuration of urban spaces. Planners and policymakers must integrate gender perspectives into transport systems to support equitable access and reduce the additional burdens placed on women. This might include planning more interconnected transit routes and strategically placing transit stops to align with common trip-chaining patterns among women.
Implications for employers
The gender commuting gap not only affects individuals but also has broader implications for workplace diversity and equality. By restricting the geographical area where mothers can work, employers miss out on the potential contributions of female talent, leading to a decrease in the diversity of ideas and a heightened risk of groupthink. A 2020 McKinsey & Company analysis of 1,000 U.S. firms revealed that companies with greater gender diversity in their leadership teams were 25% more likely to achieve higher profits than their less diverse counterparts.
To challenge ingrained gender norms, society also requires more transformative employer-driven strategies. Addressing the commuting gap requires flexible working arrangements and the promotion of remote work opportunities. By enabling mothers to work from home or have flexible hours, employers can make longer commutes more feasible, potentially increasing the attractiveness of better jobs that are farther away. Policies should also extend these benefits to fathers to encourage a shift in gender norms, promoting a more equitable distribution of parenting responsibilities. This change would help alleviate mothers’ time poverty and discourage women from compromising wages for commuting time.
Several companies are already taking strides beyond mere compliance with legal standards by establishing childcare facilities either on-site or close by. This provision plays a critical role in promoting a balanced and organic division of caregiving duties among couples, eliminating the need for a designated primary caregiver. Such initiatives can significantly lessen the commuting demands placed on parents, thereby addressing one of the major logistical challenges they face.
Rethinking our approach: breaking away from path-dependent policies
Beyond individual employer policies, there is a pressing need for urban planning and childcare policies that support working parents more holistically. The prevailing approach to childcare and family policies in the UK and other developed countries has traditionally focused on addressing gender wage disparities through financial support mechanisms.
Current policies predominantly focus on improving childcare accessibility and affordability while promoting flexible working conditions. In the UK, these include policies such as:
Tax-Free Childcare, which provides financial support for childcare costs,
30 Hours Free Childcare, which offers 30 hours of free childcare per week for eligible families,
Universal Credit, which includes provisions to help with childcare expenses
These measures are designed to help mothers in balancing work and family commitments. However, they largely address the symptoms of the problem i.e. time poverty, rather than its root causes through questioning the causes of time poverty.
Fundamentally, the issue is about how we plan our cities and use the finite urban space. The concept of the ‘15-minute city’ that provides essential amenities and facilities within a fifteen-minute travel range, represents a transformative approach to urban planning in an effort to support everyone’s wellbeing and productivity. Policymakers should focus on enhancing the availability and accessibility of childcare and educational facilities within close proximity to residential and employment centres, as well as major transport hubs. Encouraging the co-location and connection of these facilities can greatly alleviate the commuting burden faced by parents, thereby addressing one of the core aspects of the gender commuting gap. In Nagareyama, Japan, the introduction of transportation services to all nursery schools in the city led to a cultural shift toward equal parenting in a society in which women typically shoulder most domestic chores and child-rearing responsibilities. This strategic approach to urban planning and policy could mark a significant step forward in creating environments that truly cater to the needs of working parents.