Women use public transport to commute to work twice as often

Women, during the launch of ‘Shakti’ free bus travel program for women at Vidhana Soudha in Bengaluru on June 11, 2023. | Photo credit: MURALI KUMAR K

The National Household Travel Survey (NHTS), which captures how people in India travel to work, shows a clear gender gap in mobility and modes of travel to work.

The data shows that women are twice as likely as men to commute to work by public transport such as buses, trains or on foot.

Almost 67% of all women commuting to work relied on walking, buses or other public transport. This figure was only 33% for all male commuters.

In rural areas, more than half of all working women walked to their workplaces. However, a large proportion of men were dependent on two-wheelers.

While two-wheelers remained the main mode of transport for both men and women in urban areas, women were not only dependent on two-wheelers.

Statewise analysis shows that the proportion of women walking to work instead of relying on buses was higher than the national average in central and northeastern states, including MP, UP and Bihar, indicating low availability of public transport. In southern states like Keralam, the gap between women driving buses in rural and urban areas has reduced significantly.

In states like MP, UP, Bihar and Chhattisgarh, rural women are overwhelmingly dependent on walking. For example, in Madhya Pradesh, 88.7% of rural women walked and only 2.0% used the bus. This could signal either limited access to public transport or remote workplaces.

In Kerala, only 20.1% of rural women walked while 48.6% used the bus. This is the highest proportion of bus usage among rural women in the country. In general, the proportion of women who walk to work decreases in urban areas

While women in urban areas also rely on other means such as cars and autos, they still take slightly longer to commute to work than men. In at least 13 large states, a higher proportion of men than women commuted to work in about 30 minutes. As the survey does not provide ownership details, a detailed analysis is not possible.

The use of public transport also reflects the cost of commuting. Although women’s commuting expenditures are lower than men’s in rural areas, the gap narrows in urban areas.

Data for the charts were obtained from the National Household Travel Survey conducted by the National Statistics Office (NSB) under the Ministry of Statistics and Program Implementation (MoSPI). The survey was conducted from July 2025 to June 2026 and covered 2,84,769 rural and 2,07,254 urban households. The analysis only concerns the proportion of workers aged 15 and over, and travel is defined as travel over a distance of more than 1 km.

Published – 07 Oct 2026 08:00 IST