ETD

• commuting time
• family responsibilities
• gender gap
• instrumental variables
• labour supply
• machismo culture

In this article, we investigate how increasing travel times contribute to the gender gap in labour market participation in Mexico in 2020, using microdata from the INEGI (2020a) Census on Population and Housing. To address endogeneity concerns, we adopt an instrumental variable approach using the normalised average commuting distance (nACD) and Mean speed (MS) score as instruments for commuting time. Our estimates indicate that a 10-min increase in commuting time decreases the probability of married women participating in the labour market by 16.4 percent. In contrast, the estimated effect on men is smaller, suggesting that longer commutes have a stronger negative effect on women's participation decisions than on men's.
When exploring potential mechanisms behind the gender asymmetry in our results, we do not find evidence that differences in labour market productivity within couples contribute to the larger penalty of commuting times on women. However, we do find that the negative effect on women increases with the number of children. Based on this evidence, we conclude that as commuting costs rise, traditional gender norms and a machismo culture, that expect women to be primary caregivers and fulfil the responsibilities associated with being “good” mothers, discourage Mexican women from participating in the workforce. Additionally, we suggest that stressful and unsafe commuting experiences, stemming from gender-based violence in public transportation, could also be a contributing factor that warrants further exploration.