Abstract
Ride-hailing has the potential to reduce gender inequities in transportation if its gender patterns were better understood. This study uses a U.S. national travel survey to examine how the gender gaps in ride-hailing associate with two domains of gender inequity: mobility factors and social norm factors. Our regression models show that ride-hailing is not gender-neutral. On average, men are more likely and more frequently to use ride-hailing than women in U.S. metropolitan areas, controlling for age, race, education, and income. Evidence also points to social norms associated with these patterns—ride-hailing serves employed men more than employed women, more men than women with young children, and car-sufficient men more than car-sufficient women. Recognizing and mitigating the gender gaps in ride-hailing could also benefit socio-economically disadvantaged people. We suggest two directions of interventions: (1) mobility-based interventions taking advantage of ride-hailing to complement public transit among women in lower SES groups; (2) gender-based interventions aiming to support women’s mobility in labor force participation.
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by grants from the University of Wisconsin–Madison Global Health Institute, the Center for Transportation Equity, Decisions, and Dollars (CTEDD) funded by U.S. Department of Transportation Research and Innovative Technology Administration (OST-R) and housed at The University of Texas at Arlington, with additional support provided by the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Graduate Education at the University of Wisconsin–Madison with funding from the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation.
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Yang, Y., McAndrews, C. Gender gaps in ride-hail use in U.S. metropolitan areas. Transportation (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11116-023-10436-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11116-023-10436-7