Gender and mobility: household dynamics, caregiving and patriarchal constraints shaping women’s movement in Kochi, India

Women’s mobility is shaped by gendered social norms, caregiving responsibilities and patriarchal expectations. This study examines how middle-aged women in urban India navigate mobility constraints produced by household gender dynamics and care work. Drawing on Bourdieu’s concept of habitus and Hochschild’s ‘second shift’, the analysis explores how women’s mobility choices are conditioned by internalised norms and the everyday demands of caregiving. Based on 25 in-depth interviews with working women in Kochi, the study adopts an inductive exploratory approach to examine the intersection of care work, gendered power relations and urban mobility. The findings show that women’s travel patterns are shaped by the double burden of paid work and unpaid care, resulting in trip-chaining, dependence on male household members, and self-regulated limits on distance and timing. Many women avoid long commutes or night-time travel not because of infrastructure alone but due to social conditioning and concerns about respectability and safety. Current transport planning insufficiently accounts for care-related mobility, reinforcing barriers to independent movement. By bringing feminist urbanist perspectives into dialogue with gendered mobility research, the study highlights the need for transport policies that recognise caregiving practices and address the patriarchal constraints shaping women’s movement.