THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: For many women, the workday starts well before they reach the workplace and ends only after they make the journey home. In Keralam, the journey to work is taking a sizeable bite out of women’s monthly budgets.
Women workers travelling to a fixed workplace in the state spend an average Rs 1,489 a month on commuting, according to the first National Household Travel Survey (NHTS) conducted by the Union Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation. That is the second-highest average among states and union territories and almost three times the all-India average of Rs 533 for women workers.
The numbers become even more striking when buses enter the picture. Nearly one in two urban women workers (46.8%) in Keralam who travel more than 1 km to work use a bus as their primary mode of transport. The corresponding national figure for urban women is just 21.7%. The NHTS defines travel as movement of at least one km and identifies the primary mode as the mode covering the longest distance of a trip. Its workplace figures cover workers aged 15 years and above who undertook such trips to a fixed workplace.
B G Sreedevi, former director of the National Transportation Planning and Research Centre (Natpac), said the higher commuting cost in Keralam could be attributed to the large number of working women who use two-wheelers. “This is primarily due to the absence of public transport, especially from the outskirts to cities,” Sreedevi said.
Call for more affordable public transport
“The findings point to the need for creating more affordable, comfortable and reliable public transport, especially in such untapped areas,” Sreedevi said.
Women in rural areas take an average 30 minutes to reach their fixed workplace, seven minutes more than the national rural average of 23 minutes. For the state’s urban workers, this is 27 minutes, same as national urban average.
The fieldwork ran from July 2025 to June 2026, while the Priyadarshini free bus ride scheme for women was launched this June. Hence, the findings cannot be used to assign a precise rupee figure to the savings women stand to make through the scheme. The `1,489 represents overall travel-related expense to and from the workplace.
For thousands of women, therefore, the journey to work is not just about getting from home to office. It is a recurring monthly expense -- one that Priyadarshini is now attempting to take off their shoulders.