Constructing women's immobility: Fear of violence and Women’s constricted nocturnal travel behaviour

Abstract

Women’s constricted daily mobility has been a key topic in transportation research. Gender role and women’s limited access to efficient transport means are recognised as causing their constricted daily mobility when compared with men. However, could there be another reason for this observation? This study offers an ulterior explanation by bridging feminist theory on the spatiality and temporality of women’s fear of violence in public spaces with quantitative travel behaviour studies. By theorising and empirically examining women’s fear-induced time-sensitive immobility, this study investigates women’s sensitivity to fear of violence during nocturnal travel. Moreover, it explores how fear of violence impedes women from having equal nocturnal mobility as men do in terms of whether to engage in nocturnal travel, time of nocturnal travel, and mode choice for nocturnal travel. This study goes beyond the dichotomy between women and men to examine the variations in sensitivity to fear and fear-induced constricted nocturnal travel behaviour amongst women, particularly in consideration of individual differences in capability and agency in mitigating fear. The empirical examination is based on a structural equation model approach to the analysis of 1112 questionnaires collected from two Chinese cities. Drawing from the empirical findings, policy implications for mitigating the fear-induced immobility of women are proposed. Overall, this study offers an integrated approach to bridging feminist geography and travel behaviour studies that pays due attention to gender, fear, time, urban space (transportation settings), and mobility.