Date of Award

2022

Document Type

Masters Thesis

Degree Name

M.A.

Organizational Unit

College of Natural Science and Mathematics, Geography and the Environment

First Advisor

Eric Boschmann

Second Advisor

Andrew Goetz

Third Advisor

Chiara Piovani

Keywords

Caregiving, Economic geography, Infrastructure accessibility

Abstract

World-wide, women are less integrated into the labor force than men and if they are, they earn considerably less on average. This unequal treatment of women results in negative consequences for all members of society, as it harms women’s financial realities and also affects women’s care receivers due to a lack of resources that women can spend on their care giving. The research presented analyses how much the institution of better accessible care infrastructure could improve women’s ability to work for pay and decrease their daily workloads. The extent to which improved care infrastructure accessibility affects women’s lives is determined through a mixed-methods approach applied to the case of Denver, Colorado. The quantitative analysis proves that Denver fits into national trends of gendered labor market segregation. The qualitative section discusses the lived realties of 15 women in two census block groups in Denver, that show that access to care infrastructure does matter significantly in women’s decision-making whether or not to work, but that apart from physical infrastructure, financial hurdles represent the biggest to obstacle to access help with care giving. Future researchers of this topic should focus on time-space accessibilities of childcare and ways how gender mainstreamed infrastructure can reflect women’s local lifestyles better.

Publication Statement

Copyright is held by the author. User is responsible for all copyright compliance.

Rights Holder

Julia Schinnenburg

Provenance

Received from ProQuest

File Format

application/pdf

Language

en

File Size

178 pgs

Discipline

Geography

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