Stuck in the Slow Lane: Reconceptualizing the Links between Gender, Transport and Employment

This article draws on primary research undertaken in the North East of England to explore the way in which inequalities in access to transport resources impact on women’s opportunities to enter the public domain of paid work. It advances the idea of spatiality as a social construction and, building on previous studies, it explores the way in which a gender division of transport operating in the home and at work limits women’s access to temporal, financial and personal and geographic travel resources; ultimately constraining women’s mobility and restricting their employment opportunities. Finally, the article will argue that, although some women can achieve ‘masculine’ levels of transport resources, the majority of women are stuck in the slow lane and their mobility deprivation often confines them to the private world of the family, or alternatively, to part‐time, low paid work on the periphery of the labour market. This leads to the conclusion that there is an urgent need to provide women with a range of mobility choices which enhance their access to the labour market and to challenge the socially constructed processes which underpin the discrimination women face when accessing the world of paid employment.