ABSTRACT
The car has attracted particular attention in research on gender–travel links. This is true with respect to its availability, its use, and the subjective meanings associated with it. In societies with high levels of car ownership, dual-licensed couples who share a car are an interesting case for study, as it is only with these couples that there is reason to assume that the (one) car necessitates negotiation between the partners about its use. While most studies in the gender–travel field are cross-sectional in nature, life course-oriented longitudinal studies of travel behaviour have emerged under the label of ‘mobility biographies’ in recent years. In this approach, key events in individuals’ lives are hypothesised to impact upon travel behaviour, activity patterns, and ownership of cars or other ‘mobility tools’. The chapter links results from two related quantitative studies. The first investigates car access in couple households who share a car. The second looks at changes in car access over time as a function of life course events, socio-demographics, urban form, and path dependence. Both studies employ a gender perspective. The data used is the German Mobility Panel (GMP) in which households and their members are asked three times in three subsequent years to report the trips they made over a week. The findings from the first study show that women have considerably lower access to a car than their male partners in low-car households (i.e. when couples share a car), and their power to increase access either by bringing home money or by doing out-of-home household work is more limited than male power. The second study has mixed results with respect to the gendered effects of key events. From the results, I conclude that smart mobility services such as sharing systems may help relax women’s daily travel and activity patterns (at least as long as car access is limited). Such systems may clearly permit the linking of multiple destinations and serve longer trip chains better than conventional public transport or the bicycle alone.
