Factors Associated with the Gender Gap in the Mobility of Care within Two-Parent Households in Mexico City

Mobility of care (MOC) is a term that has recently been introduced into the transportation planning literature to refer to travel related to activities needed for the upkeep of the home and the well-being of its members. Gender bias is an issue since such travel is mainly undertaken by women and remains largely hidden in traditional travel surveys. The emergent quantitative work has focused on identifying MOC patterns across individual aspects; however, this approach limits the understanding of the interdependent nature of MOC among household members. There is a lack of household-level studies which would help better understand the MOC gender gap. This study in the Mexico City Metropolitan Area develops robust regression models to understand the determinants of the MOC gender gap, controlling for two-parent household structures. The results consistently demonstrate that travel time to work is strongly and inversely associated with the availability to participate in MOC for the head-of-household (predominantly men) and the spouse (predominantly women). The spouse who is dedicated to home chores is the main actor carrying out MOC, increasing the gap in their larger load as the household grows (e.g., with children in basic education), and when MOC is done solely on weekdays. The built environment showed limited associations with the gender MOC gap. Other significant associations, and results were compared with the literature and discussed for their relevance to reducing the gender gap.