The Geodemography of Gender: Spatial Behaviour of Working Women

In the Netherlands the labour force participation of women has risen rapidly in the last fifteen years, resulting in large generation differences. Clear gender differences can also be found when the effects related to age, year of birth and time of occurrence are distinguished. Increasing mobility and increasing distance between work and home is found to be a general process for all cohorts of men, but not for women, among whom only the younger cohorts have reached a higher mobility pattern. Evidence is also found indicating that distance to work does not decrease with larger time budget problems resulting from more hours worked. Finally, it is shown that gender differences in the links between residences and place of work did not decrease during the eighties.