Measuring accessibility for women: the state of the practice in the academic literature

Abstract

It is important for transportation agencies to understand how gender impacts access to opportunities in order to ensure a fair distribution of benefits to the entirety of the populations they serve. The aim of this review is to examine the ways in which accessibility measures in the academic literature have captured gender differences and to explore opportunities for improving the practice of accessibility measurement with the goal of informing the development and application of more relevant measures when evaluating accessibility for women. The studies reviewed demonstrate many different approaches to evaluating accessibility by gender. Some studies employ accessibility measures tailored to women, with most of these focusing on their specific activity needs and fewer quantitatively accounting for the unique travel barriers faced by women. Other studies use gender-neutral measures of accessibility in analyzing the effect of gender on accessibility or in predicting gender differences in outcomes of interest. Gendered travel barriers are well documented in the literature, but our review of accessibility measures shows that this knowledge has not yet been fully incorporated into quantitative measures of accessibility. We outline a variety of ways that the practice of accessibility measurement can be improved to more accurately capture the needs and experiences of women.

The authors' abstract, as published at the source. Transport Reviews, 2026 · DOI ↗