Gender Differences in Activities and Mobility in the Netherlands, 1975 to 1990

Abstract

As in many other countries, a growing number of women in the Netherlands are entering the labor market. The difference between male and female participation in paid work is decreasing, and more men are taking care of domestic duties. It is expected that these changes will lead to growing numbers of task combiners and to more similar patterns of travel behavior for men and women. The intention of the present research is to investigate these expectations for the situation in the Netherlands. For this goal two groups of time budget data for the period from 1975 to 1990 were analyzed. The focus was on gender differences in trends in time use and mobility. The results indicate that between 1975 and 1990, the distribution of paid work and domestic work by men and women changed, more men and women were performing combinations of obligatory tasks, gender differences in mobility became smaller, and car use, both for men and for women, depended heavily on the workload of an out-of-home paid job.