Week 2 - post week independent study

Since Friday I have been talking to some mums and what's been interesting is that my findings are not revealing that they find driving stressful so it will be interesting to see what Hannah comes up with when we meet up on Tuesday.

I did some other research into women + driving and collated all my best findings into a document:

“It's driving her mad”: Gender differences in the effects of commuting on psychological health

http://www.sciencedirect.com.ezproxy.massey.ac.nz/science/article/pii/S0167629611000853?np=y

Over the past decade or so, economists have begun to consider how data on well-being and psychological health can help to address important economic questions

virtually no consideration has been given to the role of commuting.² This is somewhat surprising because commuting is an important part of the day for those who work, and psychologists have long recognised the potentially detrimental effect of this particular activity (Koslowsky et al., 1995). 

This should be seen alongside a more general concern with levels of stress and psychological problems amongst the working population, which seem to arise from the ever-increasing demands on our time and problems with maintaining an appropriate work-life balance (Taylor, 2001).

commuting is a major cause of stress arising from its unpredictability and perceived loss of control (Evans et al., 2002,Gottholmseder et al., 2009 and Koslowsky et al., 1995). 

Putnam (2000) cites commuting as a major cause of increased social isolation, which in turn leads to unhappiness. On the other hand, some commentators have pointed out the potential positive aspects of the daily commute, providing precious time alone to work, read or think, or simply to wind down from the working day (Lyons et al., 2007, Ory and Mokhtarian, 2005 and Redmond and Mokhtarian, 2001). This is likely to depend on the time spent commuting, the mode of transport and the degree of control over the journey exercised by the individual.

Our results show that, even after all these variables are considered, commuting still has an important detrimental effect on the psychological health of women, but in general men are not affected, and this result is robust to numerous different specifications. We explore possible explanations for this gender difference and can find no evidence that it is due to women's shorter working hours or weaker occupational position. Rather women's greater sensitivity to commuting time seems to be a result of their larger responsibility for day-to-day household tasks, including childcare and housework. 

Commuting is an important and ever-increasing part of how we use our time. In 1997, the average worker in Britain commuted for 48 min per day; in 2006 this had increased to 54 min, or 12% of a standard full-time working week (National Travel Survey, 1997, 2006). This trend is not unique to the UK; in Spain commuting times have increased from 31 to 34 min over the same period, in Holland from 42 to 49 min, in Italy from 22 to 35 min and in the US from 44 to 51 min (although in France and Germany commuting times do not seem to have increased).³

women tend to work shorter hours and earn a lower hourly wage than men; hence the monetary cost of commuting is relatively more expensive for women, and their travel time has a higher relative weight. On the other hand women's lower wages mean that the opportunity costs of time spent commuting will be lower than for men, and also women's shorter hours may mean fewer days at work, thus less commuting time. Also women are more likely to work in lower status service sector occupations, which are more geographically dispersed than other jobs thus increasing their chances of finding employment closer to home (Hanson and Johnston, 1985 and MacDonald, 1999).⁶

women tend to provide the bulk of domestic work and childcare and to be secondary wage earners (Blau and Ferber, 1992). The former will mean they have less flexibility in their time use on a day-to-day basis (this may account for women's higher valuation of time relative to men (Madden and White, 1980)

Predicting risky and angry driving as a function of gender

http://www.sciencedirect.com.ezproxy.massey.ac.nz/science/article/pii/S0001457506001722?np=y 

Children in the car bring about special challenges, given their potential to elicit distraction and frustration in drivers. Additionally, the occurrence of a car accident with children involved raises grave implications. Overall, there is ample rationale for researchers to pay attention to the female driving experience, and particularly, those aspects of it that may increase the odds for harmful outcomes.