Events

This paper looks at the daily mobilities of urban working mothers as they manage the double burden of their wage earning and household responsibilities. Using secondary data sources the study attempts to deconstruct the spatial and temporal characteristics of their journeys. It supplements this with narratives from personal interviews conducted with a sample of this cohort in the in three cities-Grenoble (France), Jalandhar and Trichy (India). While doing so it demonstrates the distinction between the mobility that the women manage to achieve versus spatial accessibility to destinations.  It dwells on the role played by urban policies in women’s quotidian life, their daily journeys and eventually, on their overall well-being.

Vandana Vasudevan is doing her doctorate from the University of Grenoble , France on the topic of everyday mobilities of urban working mothers and the role of urban policies in shaping their experiences in the city.  She is an alumna of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad and Lady Shriram College prior to that. She completed a Masters in Urbanism from the Institute de Urbanisme, Grenoble, France in 2014. She is the author of the book “Urban Villager: Life in an Indian Satellite Town” (SAGE publications 2013) and is a writer/columnist for leading dailies on urban issues.