Who cares? The gendered nature of mobility of care in São Paulo

Quantitative evidence on mobility of care remains scarce and geographically uneven because conventional surveys classify trips by destination and purpose, obscuring caring responsibilities within the evidence used for transport planning. This study expands evidence from the Global South by examining the prevalence, characteristics and gendered distribution of mobility of care in the São Paulo Metropolitan Region. Carrying-passenger trips from the 2023 Origin–Destination Survey are used as a partial proxy for mobility of care and combined with trip-purpose information to distinguish caring activities. Descriptive and negative binomial analyses examine differences by gender, age, race and socioeconomic stratum and interactions between gender and these characteristics, including household car ownership. Carrying passengers accounted for 15.6% of adult trips and displayed distinctive patterns of purpose, mode and trip frequency. Women recorded higher rates than men, particularly for school- and home-related trips, whereas men’s carrying was relatively more work-related. Gender gaps differed in magnitude by race and in both magnitude and direction across the life course. Rather than following a progressive socioeconomic gradient, gender disparities formed a nonlinear U-shape, narrowing to apparent parity in the middle strata but widening asymmetrically at both ends. Car ownership further differentiated gender gaps by socioeconomic stratum and trip purpose. Methodologically, the findings support carrying-passenger data as a useful, although incomplete, means of making care visible in conventional travel surveys. Conceptually, they challenge uniform and gender-neutral accounts of everyday mobility, demonstrating that inequalities in mobility of care emerge through intersections between social positions, caring purposes and household transport resources.