Public Transport Experiences of Women Domestic Workers in Ankara: Challenges and Strategies

Abstract

Beyond the activity of carrying passengers from one point to another, transportation is an area, cut by social categories such as gender, class, age and disability, shaped by government policies and dominated by social codes. This study concentrates on the public transportation experiences of domestic workers, emphasizing that it is inevitable to approach transportation from a gender lens. Basically, this research focuses on the meanings attributed to public transport by women domestic workers, the challenges faced by the women in public transport as being women, and the strategies of coping with these challenges. The empirical basis of the research is semi-structured in-depth interviews conducted with 10 women domestic workers in Ankara in 2020. The study considers the public transport journey as a set of social relations that are not independent from the relations women establish with the vehicle itself, the driver, and other passengers, and approaches it as a process from the moment the passengers leave the home to the moment they arrive at their destination. In this study, it is argued that women's gender relations outside the home transformed their public transportation experience into a necessity rather than a choice and that the difficulties the women experience in public transportation get a multidimensional form by the articulation of problems based on gender inequalities with the class-based challenges.