Gender differences in work trips have been the subject of an abundant literature from the 70's through the 90's. Recent research indicates that differences between men and women's trips to work tend to diminish, either measured by number of trips or travel distance/time. The general purpose of this paper is to verify whether gender differences in work trips were still present during the last decade. We use data from the 1991 and the 2001 origin-destination (OD) surveys in the Quebec Metropolitan Area (QMA). A first analysis of the gender differences was realized with comparisons of Euclidean distance between home and workplace controlling for home location in the QMA, presence of children and household's motorization. Secondly, the distribution of work places was analyzed using centrographic methods in order to compare the activity spaces of male and female workers. Results indicate that gaps between work trip distances of men and women have diminished between 1991 and 2001 in the QMA, and have disappeared for women from two-worker-with-children-and-more-than-one-car households but not for two-worker-with-children households with only one car. The activity areas of men were always larger than those of women particularly for women who live in two-worker-with-children households regardless of the number of cars in the household.
Abstract