Breathing in and out: Domestic workers high exposure to air pollution in Bogota’s public transportation system

Abstract

More than 150,000 low-income women perform domestic work in Bogotá, Colombia. They are captive public transit commuters, traveling from low-income to high and middle-income residential sites for work. However, the transport system between these neighborhoods suffers from missing links. Hence, domestic workers spend more time commuting to work relative to any other urban worker in Bogotá. Moreover, the system affects domestic workers’ overall health conditions, where they inhale high doses of air contaminants. In the face of laws and policies in place perpetuating patriarchy, violence, and segregation, these poor and often-racialized women face a conundrum: they must ensure their livelihood facing pervasive health hazards. This paper analyzes the lived realities of domestic workers in terms of their commutes and the environmental hazards they face, depicting grounded legal geography. Fundamentally, it examines how legally constituted housing markets and related transportation infrastructure contribute to highly gendered and class-based geographical divides, placing domestic workers into the spatial and policy periphery and making their bodies disposable, but obliging them to negotiate these divides using inadequate and death-delivering transportation infrastructure. Finally, it reflects on the city’s planning methods that often ignore important gender, social, and economic considerations. Based on a mixed-methods approach, the paper brings material that is not often placed together, including a study of exposure to particulate matter, transportation, and legal analysis, decentering current ontologies by connecting law, environment, public health, gender, and class divides, and grounding legal geography on the daily commuting experiences of domestic workers.

Keywords

domestic workers public transportation system air pollution environmental justice gender equality

Introduction

Constitutional, national, and local legal recognition of the rights to equality (Art. 13), freedom of movement (Art. 24), health (Art. 49), a healthy environment (Art. 79), public transportation as a public service (Art. 365 Constitution, Law 105/1993 and Law 310/1996), as well as the Colombian State’s signature of treaties and international covenants to protect these rights, have done little to protect the health of female paid domestic workers (hereafter domestic workers) who commute every day for work.¹ Law that constitutes housing markets and related infrastructure, such as transportation systems, geographically divides the city according to gender and class, placing these women at the margins. They spend the longest time commuting among all occupations studied in the city (Montoya Robledo and Escovar Alvarez, 2020). In their long trips (70 min on average per trip based on data from Bogotá's Mobility Survey- 2015), we show that on average, they inhale 179 µg of particulate matter (PM) 2.5, which is 67% more than the average daily dose that men inhale (107 µg) during their commutes. Repeated and extended exposure to toxic particles contributes to cardiovascular morbidity and mortality (Brook et al., 2010) and increases acute myocardial infarction and cardiovascular and respiratory illnesses (Suárez et al., 2014). For example, perpetual obstructive aspiratory sicknesses (COPDs) are among the leading causes of mortality (Kumar & Mishra⁎, 2018). Furthermore, the International Research on Cancer of the World Health Organization (WHO) classified outdoor air pollution as a human carcinogen (Cohen et al., 2014).

There are more than 150,000 domestic workers in Bogotá. Unfortunately, their rights and their needs often go unmet. By ignoring these workers’ health needs, which stem from their extended exposure to air pollution due to inefficient transportation systems, planners and local government officials reinforce geographic restrictions on low-income women that further marginalize them. These experts plan through gendered and class lenses, without considering domestic workers’ time and health needs, causing their segregation from many of the city’s opportunities and treating them as “disposable” bodies (Wright, 2006). The law obliges domestic workers to negotiate class and gender geographical divides using inadequate and death-delivering infrastructure: these women have no choice other than to take public buses every day from the low-income areas where they afford to live to the high and middle-income residential areas where they work, risking their health in the process.

Domestic workers are the army of women who allow middle- and high-income families to work, experience leisure, and devote the time they would use to clean their houses and other activities of their choosing. The relationship between domestic workers and these families evidences a deep interdependence (Jirón and Gómez, 2018). Yet, domestic workers face cycles of violence and segregation, since the armed conflict forcibly displaced many of them (Esguerra et al., 2018). They also often experience exploitative conditions in their jobs (Osorio Pérez, 2018). They further experience health hazards, segregation, and violence in the cities. We explore how the laws play a fundamental role in geographically structuring domestic workers' harsh commutes and the subsequent health effects in contrast to those of all other commuters.

We start by describing how we understand the law in this paper and its role in helping build a city. Moreover, we examine the literature on gender and transport, domestic work, and urban informality. Then we delve into data on exposure to contaminants while commuting and the resulting health effects. From an interdisciplinary perspective combining legal scholarship with transportation and environmental engineering, we describe the mixed-methods approach used to evidence domestic workers’ excessive exposure to contaminants. Next, we reflect on the embodied experiences of this vast group of women and the health harms they suffer in their daily trips that could become a State-sanctioned death, grounding legal geography. Finally, we provide conclusions following part of the environmental justice agenda.

Domestic workers are a massive group of commuters, particularly in the Global South. In Latin America (LA), one in every five female wage workers is a domestic worker (International Labor Office, 2021). Often, and tied to the invisibility of paid and unpaid care work (Arango and Molinier, 2011; León, 2013; Pineda Duque, 2010; Pineda, 2006), their commutes are exceptionally long because transportation planners make choices disregarding their needs by leaving good public transit out of the high and middle-income residential areas where they work (Montoya-Robledo, n.d.; Montoya Robledo and Escovar Alvarez, 2020). The paper adds to the contemporary literature on domestic workers' commutes in the Global South (Buchely and Castro, 2016; Fleischer and Marin, 2019; Montoya Robledo, 2019; Montoya Robledo and Escovar Alvarez, 2020). Likewise, it engages in the literature on disposable and marginalized bodies through State action—or omission. It contributes to the existing literature by combining topics and methodologies that are usually kept apart. By grounding legal geography, it provides a novel analysis of the impact of air pollution on this population’s health. It further shows how the law helps constitute domestic workers' reality based on gendered and classed divides and how it treats their bodies as “disposable” through death-delivering infrastructure and sexist planning logic.

The legal approach

This paper understands that the law is one of the constitutive forces of human relations with a significant impact on the real-life of urban dwellers. By law, we mean what is written in the codes and the way government exercises its power by choosing when, where, and how to implement it -or not- and how it affects flesh-and-blood people. This understanding of the law draws, first, from the Legal Realist tradition. Second, we consider that the law necessarily makes decisions connected to the society it governs (Aber, 2020). Following critical legal scholar Duncan Kennedy and realist Robert Hale, the law constitutes social power by establishing ground rules for almost every type of social dispute and behavioral decision (Kennedy, 1991). Furthermore, borrowing elements from Law and Political Economy, we consider law’s constitutive role in power distribution and its interrelation with political concerns (Aber, 2020).

In LA, we follow sociolegal scholars Rodríguez and García-Villegas’ description of Institutional legal pluralism. It understands that various legal regimes can coexist under the same jurisdiction because of the State’s selective application of the law. In practice, the same legal norm is applied differently to diverse groups and persons (García-Villegas and Rodríguez, 2003: 47). Whether the State intervenes or not, the reason is not always legal. It neither follows the general interest and the individual freedoms. It builds on technical, contextual, and political considerations, and yet regardless of these factors, the final decision is a legal one (García-Villegas and Rodríguez, 2003). In LA’s urban spaces, the decision to apply the law selectively produces harshly divided spaces of protection and abandonment, yielding the most unequal region worldwide (Caldeira, 2000). Law is present by State omission, and the abandoned site or group still responds to the legal regime.

Considering this broad definition of the law connected to the social group it affects, we believe that the law constitutes cities’ planning and operation. It is not the only force at play but a crucial one. Our position draws from Gerald Frug’s legal scholarship, emphasizing that the urban fabric does not result from individual choices alone but from multiple governmental policies that translate into legal norms (Frug, 1999). Legal rules’ structure markets for cities, including housing markets. They also create boundaries among cities, markets, the government, unions, and corporations (Schragger, 2016). Human judgment on where to establish these boundaries precedes this law (Schragger, 2016). Likewise, city authorities deploy their power both through formal authority and actual capacity to govern (Schragger, 2016). For this paper, we understand the law encompassing the choices and the power of authorities, the written law, and the legal effects (by action or omission) on urban dwellers, as we ground legal geography.

The literature review

Gender and transport

Studies building on the sexual division of space critique capture the differences between men and women who commute in the urban space worldwide. Although men often travel in a pendulum motion, from their homes to their jobs and back; women frequently travel with dependents and engage in trip chaining—they make more trips tied to their familial responsibilities due to their gender roles as primary caregivers (Hasson and Polevoy, 2011; Jeff & McElroy, n.d.; Pickup, 1984; Queirós, Margarida, Marques da Costa, 2012; Sánchez De Madariaga, 2013). These patterns increase their commuting expenses and the number of trips they execute (Lecompte and Bocarejo, 2017). Moreover, the law linked to transportation planning operates in a gendered and classed fashion that causes inefficient and expensive commutes for women.

From a gender perspective, mobility is both a social practice and social relation; thus, mobility and social structures are mutually constituted (Jirón and Singh, 2017). Since women are a diverse group of commuters, factors such as their income, residence and job location, bodies, role as caregivers, occupation, educational level, and interdependent decisions to travel based on multiple individual and contextual circumstances must be analyzed when planning transportation (Chant, 2013; Jirón and Cortés, 2011; Law, 1999; Mejia-Dorantes, 2017; Montoya Robledo, 2019; Rivera, 2010; Sang et al., 2011).

Studies have been conducted on the mobility experiences of women in LA. For example, Soto has written on how women in Mexico City experience gender-based violence, in addition to detailing their strategies regarding space usage and the familial responsibilities they perform while commuting (Soto Villagrán, 2013, 2019). Buchely and Castro have also researched informal transit in Cali, Colombia, describing urban spaces as social constructions where gender power dynamics operate and impact the geographic experience in a differentiated manner (Buchely and Castro, 2016).

In Bogotá, transport scholars show that women travel less frequently and for shorter distances than men, but their trips take more time (Lecompte and Bocarejo, 2017). Similar to international literature findings, women’s commuting characteristics directly relate to the gender roles that make them the primary caregivers inside their household (Lecompte and Bocarejo, 2017: 4248). The travel patterns also reflect women’s socio-spatial status. Although higher-income women often live closer to the Central Business Districts (CBD) and thus have higher chances of getting the job they want, lower-income women tend to reside further away from desired opportunities¹ (Lecompte and Bocarejo, 2017: 4250).

Domestic work and urban informality

Domestic workers lie at the intersection of labor and urban informality. Their limited earnings for the highly informal jobs they perform compounds the difficulties they face in accessing housing as very low-income urban dwellers. The International Labor Office suggests that while domestic workers represent 0.8% of the total employment in developed countries, the number goes up to 7.6% in LA (International Labor Office, 2013). Furthermore, 95% of people who perform domestic work are women, making it a highly feminized occupation. For example, in Colombia, there are more than 700,000 domestic workers (DANE, 2018). Ethnographic studies on domestic workers' labor rights in LA revolve mainly around the complex, emotional, and hierarchical relationships between employers and domestic workers (Brites, 2000, 2013; Gorban, 2012; Gorbán and Tizziani, 2018; Osorio Pérez, 2018; Tizziani, 2011); care chains and migration to the Global North (Ehrenreich and Hochschild, 2002; Killias, 2018; Montoya-Robledo, 2011); and collective action and unionization to ensure these rights (Acciari, 2016; León, 2013; Maich, 2014; Montoya, 2019; Osorio Pérez, 2018; Tizziani, 2011).

As Melissa Wright described in “Disposable Women,” female factory workers in Mexico and China remain disposable to maintain the productivity and competitiveness of the industry (Wright, 2006). Although American men make-up the head and the eyes, Mexican women make-up the arms and the hands, reinstating the gendered and racialized subjects essential for the idea of “progress” to occur (Wright, 2006). Wright also refers explicitly to how managers of these companies described working women as “brainless bodies” (Wright, 2001). She further connected these production bodies to the hundreds of murdered and discarded female bodies in northern Mexico to show them as a waste from the corporate complex (Wright, 2006). She brings in the myth of “disposability,” how it materializes in death and torture, and how it hides value production within capitalism (Wright, 2001, 2006). Wright demonstrates how these low-income Mexican women become nobody’s concern in the public sphere, in addition to being considered incomplete humans, resulting in the State and society ignoring the violence inflicted upon them. Domestic workers in Bogotá are similarly dehumanized both at work and in the city.

With recent decades’ rapid urbanization process in LA, most domestic workers shifted from living inside their employers’ households to living in their own homes with their families (Brites, 2013; Huyette, 1994). This shift combines with large LA cities’ urban segregation where, first, high and middle-income and low-income residential neighborhoods are often geographically segregated, and domestic workers are bound to live in the city’s outskirts. By incentivizing urban developers to buy cheaper terrains for lower-income housing in the city’s extreme periphery and then inefficiently planning bus routes and proper streets in these areas, the law constitutes these segregated housing markets and the deficient public transportation that connects them to the city. As in the United States, cities often “… make decisions that benefit the interests of landowners and developers because cities depend on them to stimulate the local economy. […] [T]hese decisions not only impose substantial costs, such as displacement, on others in the population but are hard for those adversely affected to overturn” (Frug, 1999: 148). Additionally, high and middle-income residential sites lack proper public transportation (Montoya-Robledo, 2020). Despite inadequate pedestrian infrastructure, domestic workers must walk long distances in these residential sites. These factors account for domestic workers’ excessively long commutes.

Low-income women are the primary users of Bogotá’s public transportation (Moscoso et al., 2020). Insufficiently integrated fares within an integrated transportation system like Bogotá’s impacts domestic workers because most travel daily to different neighborhoods for work (Oviedo and Titheridge, 2016: 159). Ethnographic accounts of domestic workers commuting in Bogotá have reflected on their subjective experiences (Fleischer and Marin, 2019). A mixed-methods study described domestic workers’ expensive trips in Bogotá (Montoya Robledo and Escovar Alvarez, 2020).

Air quality and public transportation

The increasing urbanization of cities poses a challenge to transport systems, as they try to keep up with the growing demand for services (Boisjoly et al., 2020). Cities often rely on aging, fossil fuel-based vehicles that contribute to air pollution to meet this demand (Johanssona et al., 2017), as the high cost and inaccessibility of vehicles that run on renewable energy are prohibitive (Li and Loo, 2014). A standard indicator of air pollution is PM, a mixture of solid and liquid organic or inorganic particles suspended in the air (World Health Organization, 2018). Given its physical and chemical characteristics, exposure to PM represents a risk to human health, especially particles with an aerodynamic diameter of 10 micros (PM10) or less (PM2.5 or ultrafine particles). PM2.5 is breathable and can reach the lungs' alveolar region (Thabethe et al., 2014).

PM concentration correlates with adverse health effects on humans at concentrations found on traffic corridors (Kumar and Mishra⁎, 2018). Chronic exposure to high PM levels closely links to an increase in respiratory problems, hospital admissions, and mortality; and short-time exposure to peak concentrations can also relate to adverse health impacts (Odekanle et al., 2016), including cardiovascular and respiratory effects (Environmental Protection Agency, 2017).

Emission inventories in urban areas suggest that motor vehicles are the primary PM source at an ambient level. In Bogotá, the Decennial Plan for Air Decontamination established that mobile sources are responsible for 1400 +- 400 tons/year of PM compared to 1100 +- 120 tons/year that result from stationary sources. In the case of transport, public buses account for the most significant share of PM emissions (39%), followed by freight vehicles (33%) and motorcycles (21%) (Secretaría Distrital De Ambiente, 2010). Traditional public transportation and freight vehicles operating with diesel engines produce the most substantial emissions of PM2.5.

Although most adverse health effects are associated with ambient air pollution, it is worth studying the effects of pollutants in microenvironments as people spend significant time in confined spaces, at work, at home, or in transit. Travelers inside different vehicles experience high exposure to pollutants due to air intakes’ proximity to exhaust emissions, which may contribute to a substantial fraction of the total daily exposure (Johanssona et al., 2017; Odekanle et al., 2016).² Studies comparing the exposure level on different transportation modes have concluded that motorists and public transit commuters have higher exposure levels than cyclists and pedestrians (Cepeda et al., 2017; Morales et al., 2017).

Methodology

Data comes from three primary sources. First, we use Bogotá's Mobility Survey (2015), with a confidence level of 95% and confidence intervals of 0.73% for the whole area studied and up to 6% for each study domain. It includes data on 28,213 households and more than 147,000 trips (District Mobility Secretariat of Bogotá, 2015). We calculated the average daily individual travel times per transportation mode per gender and per occupation. Our analysis only included weekday trips made with an origin or destination in Bogotá. We estimated a statistical test for identifying significant differences in travel times, as the sample varies for each mode and person’s occupation. To have statistically significant differences in travel times and, thus, in exposure times, we estimated differences in inhaled dose for female domestic workers versus women vs. and men, by calculating the time spent on different transportation modes and the mass concentration of PM2.5 found on different transportation modes. We also estimated the number of trips by each mode to analyze PM exposure by population studied, in addition to the individual analysis.

Second, we took the PM2.5 concentration for each transportation mode from a previous study conducted in Bogotá by Morales et al. (2017), measuring the PM2.5 exposure concentration in arterial corridors for the leading transportation modes.

The inhalation rate indicates the air volume that a person breathes in during a unit of time (l/min) in comparison to the amount of PM2.5 inhaled by a person. The potential inhaled dose of a commuter i during a trip on a transport mode j, $D_{i j}$ (µg) is measured with the exposure concentration $C_{j}^{i}$ (µg/m3), the inhalation rate that corresponds to the most common activity for each transport mode $I R_{j}$ (m3/min) and the exposure time of the commuter on a specific transportation mode $Δ t_{i j}$ (h). The inhalation rate associated with each activity level was selected from the EPA’s Exposure Factor Handbook - Table 6.17 (U.S. EPA, 2011), while the exposure time is equal to the travel time calculated on Bogotá’s Mobility Survey (2015). (See equation (1))

D_{i j} = C_{j}^{i} I R_{j} Δ t_{i j}

(1)

The total dose $D_{i j}^{T o t}$ (µg) is associated with the average ambient air pollution concentration of PM2.5, $C_{a i p}$ (µg/m3) monitored in Bogotá in 2015. The background inhalation rate, $I R_{b g}$ (m3/min), is assumed to be a passive level of physical activity during the day for all commuters and $t_{m a x}$ (h) corresponds to the remaining time of the day not spent commuting

D_{i j}^{T o t} = D_{i j} + C_{a i p} I R_{b g} (t_{m a x} - Δ t_{i j})

(2)

Third, we conducted more than 20 semi-structured interviews and participant observation with domestic workers and 60 semi-structured interviews with experts and public officials. Fieldwork took place between December 2017 and July 2018 in Bogotá, Chía, Cajicá, and Soacha. Participant observation with a domestic worker entailed spending a night at her house and commuting with her to her job and back home while recording our observations. We coded qualitative data using Atlas.ti software.

We followed a snowball method to contact interviewees. We selected domestic workers based on whether or not they had to commute from their homes to their employers’ houses several days per week. We picked experts and public officials based on their knowledge of urban reality, mobility, and domestic work. We finalized the interviews after collecting experiences from enough domestic workers who lived and worked in different areas in the city and concluded that their stories revealed patterns, some of which will be described below.

As for experts and public officials, we finished our fieldwork when we reached data saturation, and we had a clear understanding of the explored phenomena. When we conducted fieldwork, we did not inquire into health issues linked to commuting, so we primarily analyzed quantitative data on this subject.³

The mixed-methods approach shows both the large numbers and patterns and qualitative information added by individual stories. It follows New Legal Realism which considers that “research methods should be chosen to match the kinds of questions being asked […] this methodological eclecticism inevitably embraces qualitative as well as quantitative work” (Suchman and Mertz, 2010: 562). We changed domestic workers’ names to protect their privacy.

Domestic workers’ commutes

Domestic workers’ commutes are the longest and mostly in public transit

Bogotá’s public transit mainly operates under two systems. The traditional buses that are increasingly disappearing (García, 2017; Hidalgo, 2018), and the Transmilenio System (SITP), a mass transport system composed of Bus Rapid Transit (BRT), integrated buses, and one aerial cable. The city’s goal is for the SITP system to operate Bogotá’s public transit entirely. Initially inaugurated in 2000, politicians and experts portrayed Transmilenio as a miracle mobility solution for the city’s massive number of commuters. It was said to democratize the system by bringing small bus companies into business, tackling the penny war,⁴ moving many passengers, and diminishing the commuting times at a much lower price than a subway system (Archila, 2017; Sandoval, 2018). Transmilenio was a global success (Ardila, 2003): “… before Transmilenio there were ten BRT in the world, and after it, there were 150 BRTs” (Archila, 2017).

Nevertheless, the SITP has only partially benefited domestic workers and other commuters. Map 1 below shows how BRT trunklines and socioeconomic levels are distributed geographically. The lowest socioeconomic levels' sites, located in the South, have inferior access to BRT trunklines. Due to the geographical location of lower-income areas, people inhabiting these sites have trips covering the most extended distances and taking the most time. Although in these areas, integrated buses help them connect to the trunkline. This situation worsens if their destination is a middle- and high-income area, particularly the highest-income sites in northeastern Bogotá, where mass transit access is also poor. Integrated buses are very scarce in these areas. Therefore, the BRT mainly connects low-income areas with the CBD, based on the estimated BRT ridership.

Map 1.

Socioeconomic level and BRT trunkline in Bogotá. Source: Bogotá's Mobility Secretariat and Planning Secretariat.

Domestic workers spend the most extended time commuting among all occupational categories in Bogotá (Montoya Robledo and Escovar Alvarez, 2020).⁵ Many of these women are captive commuters of the two public transportation systems described. Domestic workers’ long commutes result from the fact that they can only afford to live in very peripheral areas and that the middle- and high-income residential areas where they work are mainly built for private vehicles and have inadequate public transit (Montoya Robledo and Escovar Alvarez, 2020).

Transportation planners choose not to provide good transit in middle- and high-income residential neighborhoods. These are job sites for massive groups of low-income workers accessing them daily. It is a choice that fits into the broad definition of the law proposed by the paper. So, why do we claim this is a choice? In informal conversations with mobility experts, they explained that they concentrated most integrated buses that connect to the BRT in low-income areas and less so in middle- and high-income residential neighborhoods due to limited financial resources. Many also agreed that residents of high-income neighborhoods would never allow buses to traverse these sites based on classist logic. This mirrors the situation in cities like Medellín and Buenos Aires (“Nordelta: Las Empleadas Domésticas Denuncian Que No Las Dejan Tomar Combis Con Propietarios,” 2018; Restrepo, 2018; Román et al., 2018). These decisions are part of the broad understanding of the law described above.

Another piece of evidence revealing that planners and local law-makers choose not to respond to domestic workers’ urban needs is the most recent project for Bogotá's Territorial Ordering Plan (POT)—presented to the city council in September 2021—; the most critical legal planning instrument for the city’s future development. One of its main goals is building a city for care work. Nevertheless, its more than 400 pages explicitly refer to unpaid care work, leaving aside paid care work, which domestic workers perform (Montoya-Robledo, 2021). It proposes aerial cables close to areas where domestic workers find their jobs, such as La Calera in northeastern Bogotá. This aerial cable focuses on tourism and recreation, leaving out the employment purpose, which is fundamental for domestic workers. It excludes paid domestic work from any commercial, services or residential classification, ignoring that these women render paid care work in residential sites.

Low-income women’s access to private vehicles—that is, motorcycles and bicycles, which could significantly improve travel times is minimal (Moscoso et al., 2020). Domestic workers often lack financial resources to buy a car –which is unlikely the case for low-income populations in the Global North. When transportation planners decide not to respond to domestic workers' access needs in their definition of public transit routes, they deny the right to free locomotion and public transportation service to hundreds of thousands of low-income women in Bogotá. This omission violates Article 13 of the Constitution, not only for the unequal treatment based on income but because, as a profoundly disempowered social group, the Colombian Constitutional Court has recognized domestic workers as subject to superior constitutional protection (Decision T-185, 2016). Also, the law segregates domestic workers by transportation design by not recognizing the difference in access needs—for instance, from low-income neighborhoods to high-income areas (Montoya-Robledo, n.d.).

It is worth highlighting that although low-income families are segregated as a whole, within these families, domestic workers are in a particularly burdensome situation. First, adult male family members have more access to private vehicles such as motorcycles and bicycles than domestic workers, which improves their commuting times and allows them to take routes where they could face less PM exposure. Due to their occupations, they could also be commuting to the CBD (better connected to public transit than residential sites). Second, children often find schools closer to home, so they do not face the commuting hazards that domestic workers experience.

Moreover, when transportation planners build public transportation systems between low-income residential neighborhoods in the periphery to the CBD, where most men work, they do not recognize the gendered character of the work that domestic workers perform, that they are primarily women and that the sites where they work are commonly located beyond the CBD boundaries. Thus, they are treating these low-income women more unfairly than they are low-income men, following sexist logic of planning. Both accounts of inequality represent how the law that grounds on choices and constitutes transportation planning instruments operates under gendered and classed logics, thus socio-spatially segregating domestic workers from the rights and services that urban areas offer, evidencing how law situates certain people at the margins.

Beyond these broader expressions of gendered inequality, our analysis allows for a more detailed assessment of gendered transport use, particularly for female domestic workers. As shown in Figure 5 below, the average time spent daily per transportation mode differs mainly in public transit trips (BRT and bus in the graph), where domestic workers spend, on average, 30% more time in the BRT than workers in other occupations. According to domestic worker Chava, who lives in Garcés Navas in western Bogotá, “I wake up between 3:30 and 4 in the morning. Then, I cook lunch for my son and myself, and I clean the house. Then, I take a shower and leave home at 6 in the morning […] I arrive 2 hours later in my employer’s home that is close to the Virrey Park.” She adds, “In the nights I leave at 6 p.m. and I am usually home by 8:30 or 9 p.m.” (Chava*, 2018). Chela, who lived in Soacha, on the southern border of Bogotá, spent 3 hours getting home (Chela**, 2018).

Figure 5.

Estimated total daily PM2.5 inhaled dose per transportation mode used, gender, and occupation on a typical day in Bogotá.

Figure 5, showing the average daily time spent on transit in Bogotá, shows that women on bicycles tend to have shorter trips than men and domestic workers. Domestic workers often do not cycle (Montoya Robledo and Escovar Alvarez, 2020). It could be because they tend to live in peripheral areas with poor transit accessibility (Guzman et al., 2018) and face higher average travel times (Moscoso et al., 2020). Also, they often have to travel between steep, high-income, and low-income residential sites that are not easily accessible by bicycle, as in Medellín (Montoya Robledo, 2019). Out of the domestic workers interviewed, only Sally cycled to work because she lived in a closer, low-income neighborhood in the locality of Suba. She used to leave her house at 6 a.m. and would arrive at work at 6:50 a.m. She was young and fit, and she considered the bicycle the most comfortable and fastest mode. Sally explains: “I started cycling to work because once there was a bus strike and cycling was my only option to get to my job” (Sally*, 2018).

As mentioned, another issue significantly impacting domestic workers’ travel times is that their destination tends to be a high or middle-income household with poor transit accessibility (Montoya-Robledo, n.d.; Montoya Robledo and Escovar Alvarez, 2020). For example, Argelia, who works in the exclusive Santa Ana neighborhood in northeastern Bogotá, explains: “When I get to the seventh avenue with 109 street, I walk for 15 more minutes to get to my employers’ house” (Argelia**, 2018). She has to walk because there are no bus routes in the neighborhood. Meanwhile, Mary works in Chapinero in northeastern Bogotá. In her words: “I get down in the 63 station [of the Transmilenio system] in the Caracas [avenue] and walk uphill for 20 minutes until I reach my employer’s home” (Mary**, 2018). Compared to men, domestic workers make almost twice the number of trips by feeder buses to access BRT stations (District Mobility Secretariat of Bogotá, 2015).

Figure 2 shows the share of trips on a typical day that women, domestic workers, and men execute. In general, women use more transit than men, but this difference is only significant for trips made by regular buses (not BRT). Domestic workers’ trips by BRT represent twice the share of women and men and almost twice by bus. Similarly, women make fewer trips than men in individual modes; this difference is higher for domestic workers as they only make 2% of their trips on those modes. Between 2011 and 2015, accessibility decreased for bus users as integrated buses started operating—the bus system is connected to the BRT, buses are bigger, and their frequency is lower than traditional buses. As a result, it increased travel times (Guzman et al., 2018), disproportionally impacting women, and especially domestic workers.

Figure 2.

Average daily time spent per mode, gender, and occupation analyzed on a typical day. Source: Our analysis, drawing from Bogotá's Mobility Survey (2015).

Several domestic workers referred to this change with sorrow. Miriam remembers with nostalgia taking a traditional bus from the north where she worked, spending around an hour to get back home, compared to the more than 2 hours she takes now (Miriam*, 2018). For Jimena, the mass transit system has worsened in the last ten years: “The SITP [integrated buses] are more stressful than traditional buses. [Traditional] buses came more frequently and would stop everywhere, [unlike integrated buses with designated stops]. That helped” (Jimena*, 2018). For Sally, transportation has worsened because they have taken away the traditional buses to bring in integrated buses, which do not cover the entire city. She believes that the system could improve if they brought in more traditional buses (Sally**, 2018).

Domestic workers’ exposure to particulate matter while commuting

Domestic workers are highly exposed to air contaminants in their time-consuming commutes. Despite the constitutional, legal, and local regulations on air quality, domestic workers remain at the margins. Our gender-based comparison between commuters on BRT shows no significant difference in the inhaled dose in transport microenvironments (excluding ambient air pollution) between men and women. Both genders inhale between 223 and 225 µg of PM2.5 per day (see Figure 3). Thus, when comparing domestic workers' exposure, they can be exposed to up to nearly 300 µg/day. According to WHO guidelines, this amount is 1.5 times the safe dose (25 µg/m3 of PM2.5) a person can inhale over 24 h (World Health Organization, 2018)⁶.

Figure 3.

Modal distribution of urban trips on a typical day by gender and occupation analyzed. Source: Own elaboration based on Bogotá's Mobility Survey (2015).

Exposure varies by transportation mode. For example, workers who commute on BRT can take up five times the amount of PM2.5 of those that walk (56 µg) and 15 times more than those who commute by car (18 µg). Overall, domestic workers inhale the highest average total daily dose of PM2.5.⁷

As shown above, domestic workers are regular commuters of mass transportation systems, which have the highest value of PM2.5 inhalation. When comparing the different total dosages inhaled by male, female and domestic workers in various transportation modes, public transport presents the highest value for the latter group of commuters with 411 µg on BRT and 301 µg on the bus (see Figure 4). This trend is also visible for women’s general population, who are more frequent BRT and bus riders than men.

Figure 4.

Average daily PM2.5 inhaled dose in multiple transport microenvironments on a typical day in Bogotá.

There is more air pollution on buses. Since women use public transportation more frequently than men, and domestic workers more than the general female population, both domestic workers and women are generally exposed to more air pollution than men. This exposure shows the gender and class divide in how the law structures the city. When analyzing the specific modal distribution for domestic workers, not only do they experience the highest PM2.5 inhalation dose on public transport, but three-quarters of their daily trips are on the BRT or public buses. Therefore, they face more PM2.5 exposure individually—because of travel times and as a group—because they use more buses than men.

Generally, when commuting by bicycle, men are less exposed to PM2.5, followed by women, and domestic workers having the highest intake. Trip’s duration can explain this result. Moreover, Bogotá's best transportation alternatives are private cars and walking, despite the latter having a moderate inhalation rate.⁸

In Figure 4, we compared the proportion between the ambient and in-vehicle inhaled dose based on the total dose analysis. This comparison explains how the selected transportation mode impacts the total amount of PM2.5 a person can inhale. For example, domestic workers inhale 70% of their daily PM2.5 dose while commuting on the BRT system.

The data in Figure 3 and Figure 2 reveal domestic workers inhale, on average, 67% more PM2.5 than men (107 µg), and 57% more than other women (114 µg) due to their higher distribution of trips by modes with a higher PM concentration. Similarly, women are 7% more exposed on average than men due to their higher usage of conventional buses. Although the law protects the right to health and a safe environment and regulates the system to maintain air quality, in practice, domestic workers are continually breathing in and out high PM2.5 quantities, facing higher chances of respiratory and cardiovascular diseases in the long term. Moreover, as captive commuters of public transportation systems, they are tied to buses that operate under a system planned through sexist logic. Thus, the State violates both their constitutional right to a safe environment and health. The law embedded in planning instruments and decisions segregates domestic workers.

Domestic workers as “disposable women” through environmental violence

The Black Lives Matter movement in the United States has coined the slogan “I can't breathe” to refer to the police brutality against African-American citizens. It expresses the direct State-sanctioned death inflicted upon the black body, similar to the study conducted by Pulido and De Lara (2018) when analyzing environmental justice from a racial perspective in the United States and the slow violence and death sentences imposed on the racialized bodies (Pulido and De Lara, 2018). However, the marginalization of non-white bodies occurs beyond the American borders. The “I can't breathe” slogan also applies to impoverished and often-racialized women who, like the domestic workers in Bogotá, always have to inhale high PM concentrations in their daily commutes. Their inescapable need to breathe places domestic workers at a heightened risk of premature death (Dedoussi et al., 2020; Steingraber, 2010). Violence is obscured in the shape of a State that chooses to overlook their health needs making their bodies “disposable” (Wright, 2006).

Domestic workers face very high PM2.5 exposure while commuting every day to work. They have no choice but to travel in public transportation. As a result, they have no choice but to breathe in air contaminants that are hazardous to their health. Their situation is similar to that described by Débora Swistun, who explores the question of “the social effects of carrying a pollution landscape in the body” (Swistun, 2018: 100). She argues how environmental inequality is embodied after her ethnographic work with low-income residents of villa Inflamable and barrio Porst in Buenos Aires, who live close to oil plants and suffer from constant health problems (Swistun, 2018). It also fits into a recent publication on how environmental harms accentuate inequality in Bogotá (Daza et al., 2021). In connection to the description of Wright above, it is not only through police brutality, the death penalty, or life imprisonment that a State takes life away from citizens but also through dehumanization, violence, and constant health hazards caused by precarious environmental conditions that the State has not addressed, thus deciding to overlook the lives of some gendered and racialized citizens.

Very few domestic workers have access to proper health care, although the Labour Code states their right to Social Security. The Ministry of Health data revealed that only around 20% had access to Social Security (Ministerio De Salud, 2017). Therefore, when they suffer different types of sicknesses due to their daily commutes, they have a limited quality health network to tackle these contaminants’ negative impacts on their health.

Considering freedom of locomotion is a constitutional right, and transportation is an essential public service, everyone should have equal access to it. This public transportation should have the quality to protect commuters' health and safeguard proper environmental conditions. The primary purpose of public transportation systems should be connecting people to opportunities and urban services. Public transportation is essential for domestic workers to access their jobs. Legal geography is grounded for domestic workers commuting in Bogotá, as we show how the law constituting public transportation systems is embedded in cultural and social patterns of gender and class segregation, affecting flesh-and-blood domestic workers and making their bodies “disposable.” Instead of safeguarding domestic workers’ health, transportation systems limit their right to health because of the contaminants it exposes commuters to.

Conclusion

We grounded legal geography by reflecting on how the law constitutes the highly gendered and classed commuting experiences of domestic workers in the transportation system of a megacity in the Global South. Although public transit’s main objective is to enhance users’ opportunities and access to city services, we showed how sexist and classist logic underlying planning excludes domestic workers from these services and opportunities and further harms their health. We demonstrated how domestic workers' rights to access public transportation on equal terms with other citizens, equality, health, and a safe environment are continually threatened. Their time-consuming commutes tie to the disconnection between low and middle- and high-income residential sites that the law constructs by regulating the housing market and the transportation infrastructure that connects housing to the rest of the urban fabric. As captive commuters of public transportation, their commuting times expand because of the segregation between housing sites. The very long commutes they experience force them to breathe excessive PM2.5 quantities compared to any other commuter on public transportation or any other transportation mode. Chronic PM2.5 exposure likely produces health complications. As a highly vulnerable social group, domestic workers often lack proper healthcare, and thus daily inhaling high doses of PM in public transportation compounds their harms.

Bogotá's government has recently implemented some electric transport, improving domestic workers and other commuters' health conditions. Nevertheless, even if buses produced less PM, domestic workers' commutes would continue being extremely long. The difficult conditions regarding time and health for domestic workers who commute daily symbolize segregation and violence that further compound additional vulnerability sources they face and that the Constitutional Court has recognized. Domestic workers are interdependent with families they work for as they perform invisible care work, and yet they are “disposable.” Although there are constitutional rights, national laws, and local regulations in charge of maintaining air quality standards that should protect them, grounded legal geography shows how this large group of low-income women does not access these rights.

Segregation and State-sanctioned death are not always direct or evident. Accordingly, domestic workers live in a city where they have to use public transportation to move if they want to survive, but this transportation paradoxically creates excessive time and health burdens. Hence, Bogotá becomes a place where breathing in and out, which is fundamental to life itself, ironically places them at risk of death. As indigenous activist Kyle Powys Whyte says, environmental and climate justice must address the present struggles of those affected directly by environmental and climate disruptions (Whyte, 2018). Domestic workers commuting in LA cities are one of those groups.

Footnotes

Acknowledgments

We want to thank Claudia Adriazola, Natalie Elwell and Ayushi Trivedi from WRI for their contributions, comments and edits.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Valentina Montoya-Robledo

Notes

Valentina Montoya-Robledo was appointed in 2023, having previously worked as an Assistant professor of Law at Universidad de los Andes (2021-2023), and consultant for the Transport Gender Lab at the Interamerican Development Bank (2019-2021). Her work draws on a range of qualitative and quantitative methods and currently focuses on Latin America and Africa. Valentina's doctoral research at Harvard University (2020) focused on domestic workers’ commuting experiences in Bogota and Medellin, Colombia. Valentina’s work to date has been funded by the Lee Schipper Memorial Scholarship by the World Resources Institute, the John F Meyer Transportation fund from Harvard Kennedy School, and the Harvard-Los Andes fund.

Laura Iguavita is a senior executive with 30 years of experience in global development gained through her service in multilateral organizations, government, nonprofit, and more recently the private sector. She started her career at the World Bank, where she worked for 20 years, holding several technical and managerial positions in Africa, Latin America and Eastern Europe.

Segundo López is International Data Coordinator for mobility and road safety at WRI Ross Center for Sustainable Cities. His main activities are related to road safety audits and inspections, as well as mobility and road safety data collection and analysis.Prior to joining WRI, he worked as a research assistant at Los Andes University Urban and Regional Sustainability research group. Then he worked at Despacio, a local non-governmental organization that works promoting sustainable mobility, as a project engineer where he worked in projects for promoting urban cycling among other topics. Segundo holds a Bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from Universidad de los Andes and a Master’s degree in civil engineering with emphasis on transportation at the same university. Segundo lives in Bogota, Colombia.

References

Aber

(2020) Legal Realism: An LPE Reading List and Introduction.

Acciari

(2016) “Foi difícil, mas sempre falo que nós somos guerreiras” – O movimento das trabalhadoras domésticas entre a marginalidade e o empoderamento. Mosaico, 7(11): 124.

Arango

Molinier

(2011) El trabajo y la ética del ciudado ( La Carreta (Ed.)). Medellin: La Carreta Social.

Archila

(2017) Interview with Expert. Bogota.

Ardila

(2003) Transit Planning in Curitiba and Bogota. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Cambridge, MA.

Argelia ** (2018). Interview Domestic Worker. Bogota.

Boisjoly

Serra

Oliveira

, et al. (2020) Inequity in transit: Evaluating public transport distribution through accessibility measurements in São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Curitiba and Recife, Brazil. Journal of Transport Geography 82: 1–11.

Brites

(2000) AFETO, DESIGUALDADE E REBELDIA: Bastidores do Serviço doméstico. Universidad Federal do Rio Grande do Sul. Porto Alegre.

Brites

(2013) Trabajo doméstico en Brasil: transformaciones y continuidades de la precariedad. Trayectorias 36: 3–19.

10.

Brook

Rajagopala

PopeIII

, et al. (2010) Particulate matter air pollution and cardiovascular disease. Circulation 121: 2331–2378. DOI: 10.1161/CIR.0b013e3181dbece1.

11.

Buchely

Castro

(2016) Mujer, espacio y poder: ciudad y transporte público como dispositivos de exclusión. Reflexiones desde la ciudad de Cali. Revista Estudios Socio-Jurídicos 18(2): 227–252.

12.

Caldeira

(2000) City of Walls: Crime, Segregation and Citizenship in Sao Paulo. Berkeley, California: University of California Press.

13.

Cepeda

Schoufour

Freak-Poli

, et al. (2017) Levels of ambient air pollution according to mode of transport: a systematic review. Lancet Public Health 2(1): e23–e34.

14.

Chant

(2013) Cities through a “gender lens”: a golden “urban age” for women in the global South? Environment and Urbanization 25(1): 9–29.

15.

Chava * (2018). Interview with domestic Worker. Bogota.

16.

Chela ** (2018). Interview to Domestic Worker. Bogota.

17.

Cohen

Boniface

Watkins

(2014). Health implications of transport planning, development and operations. Journal of Transport & Health 1: 63–72.

18.

Daza

León

Rubiano

(2021) La desigualdad que respiramos. Una mirada desde la justicia ambiental a la política de descontaminación del aire en Bogotá. (Dejusticia (Ed.)). Bogota: Dejusticia.

19.

Decision T-185 (2016).

20.

Dedoussi

Eastham

Monier

, et al. (2020) Premature mortality related to United States cross-state air pollution. Nature, 578: 261–265.

21.

District Mobility Secretariat of Bogotá (2015) Mobility Survey. Bogota: District Mobility Secretariat of Bogota. https://drive.google.com/file/d/0ByNoeWkPXuHpakpSeFVOdnBsQ3c/view

22.

Ehrenreich

Hochschild

(2002) Global Women. New York: Holt Paperbacks.

23.

Environmental Protection Agency . (2017). How Does PM Affect Human Health? United States: Environmental Protection Agency.

24.

Esguerra

Fleischer

Sepúlveda

(2018). Se nos va el cuidado, se nos va la vida: Migración, destierro, desplazamiento y cuidado en Colombia. Documentos de Política Cider 3.

25.

Fleischer

Marin

(2019) Atravesando la ciudad. La movilidad y experiencia subjetiva del espacio por las empleadas domésticas en Bogotá. EURE Revista Latinoamericana de Estudios Urbano Regionales.

26.

Frug

(1999) City Making: Building Communities without Building Walls. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.

27.

García-Villegas

Rodríguez

(2003) Derecho y sociedad en América Latina: propuesta para la consolidación de los estudios jurídicos críticos. In Derecho y Sociedad en América Latina: Un debate sobre los estudios jurídicos críticos. Bogota: Universidad Nacional de Colombia.

28.

García

(2017) Interview with Expert. Medellin.

29.

Gorban

(2012) Domestic work sits at the table: the role of food in the configuration of relationships between employers and employees in Buenos Aires. Revista de Estudios Sociales 45: 67–79. DOI: 10.7440/res45.2013.06.

30.

Gorbán

Tizziani

(2018) ¿Cada una en su lugar? Trabajo, género y clase en el servicio doméstico. Editorial Biblos.

31.

Guzman

Oviedo

Cardona

(2018) Accessibility changes: analysis of the integrated public transport system of Bogota. Sustainability 10(11): 39–58.

32.

Hasson

Polevoy

(2011) Gender Equality Initiatives in Transportation Policy A Review of the Literature. In: Women's Budget Forum.

33.

Hidalgo

(2018) Interview with Expert. Bogota.

34.

Huyette

(1994) L’emploi domestique dans la Colombie des années 80. In: B

Lautier

(ed) La mise en forme de la mobilité par l’emploi: les travailleurs du bâtiment et les employées domestiques en Amérique Latine (Brésil, Colombie, Chili). Paris, 269–348.

35.

International Labour Office (2013) Domestic Workers across the World: Global and Regional Statistics and the Extent of Legal Protection. Geneva: International Labour Office.

36.

International Labour Organization (2021) Making Decent Work a Reality for Domestic Workers: Progress and Prospects after the Adoption of the Domestic Workers' Convention, 2011 (No. 189), International Labour Office, Geneva.

37.

Jeff

McElroy

(n.d.) Women’s Travel: Consequences and Opportunities. United States: Federal Highway Administration. https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ohim/womens/chap5.pdf

38.

Jimena * (2018). Interview with domestic Worker. Bogota.

39.

Jirón

Cortés

(2011). Mobile relations, mobile shadows. Understanding contemporary urban daily living through shadowing techniques. In: International Workshop: The Everyday Life of Multi-Local Families. Concepts, Methods and the Example of Post-Separation Families. Munich.

40.

Jirón

Gómez

(2018) Interdependencia, cuidado y género desde las estrategias de movilidad en la ciudad de Santiago. Dossie Mobilidades 30(2): 55–72. DOI: 10.11606/0103-2070.ts.2018.142245.

41.

Jirón

Singh

(2017) Dossier. Movilidad Urbana y Género: experiencias latinoamericanas. Revista Transporte y Territorio 16: 1–8.

42.

Johanssona

Lövenheim

Schantz

, et al. (2017) Impacts on air pollution and health by changing commuting from car to bicycle. Science of the Total Enviorment 584–585: 55–63.

43.

Kennedy

(1991) The Stakes of Law, or Hale and Foucault. Legal Studies Forum 15(327).

44.

Killias

(2018) Follow the Maid: Domestic Worker Migration in and from Indonesia. Copenhagen: NIAS Press.

45.

Kumar

Mishra⁎

(2018) Human health risk assessment of major air pollutants at transport corridors of Delhi, India. Journal of Transport and Health 10: 132–143.

46.

Law

(1999) Beyond “women and transport”: towards new geographies of gender and daily mobility. Progress in Human Geography 23(4): 567–588.

47.

Lecompte

Bocarejo

(2017) Transport systems and their impact con gender equity. Transportation Research Procedia 25: 4245–4257. DOI: 10.1016/J.TRPRO.2017.05.230.

48.

León

(2013) Proyecto de Investigación-Acción: trabajo doméstico y servicio doméstico en Colombia. Revista de Estudios Sociales 45: 198–211.

49.

Loo

BPY

(2014). Alternative and transitional energy sources for urban transportation. Current Sustainable/Renewable Energy Reports 1: 19–26. DOI: 10.1007/s40518-014-0005-6.

50.

Maich

(2014) Marginalized struggles for legal reform: cross-country consequences of domestic worker organizing. Social Development Issues, 36(3).

51.

Mary ** (2018). Interview with domestic Worker. Bogota.

52.

Mejia-Dorantes

(2017) An example of low-medium income working women in Mexico City: how can their vision reshape transport policy? TRB Annual Meeting Online. http://docs.trb.org/prp/17-00334.pdf

53.

Ministerio de Salud (2017) Derecho de Petición de Información No. 201731201375321.

54.

Miriam * (2018) Interview with domestic Worker. Bogota.

55.

Montoya-Robledo

(n.d.) Overlooked Mobility: Domestic Workers Commuting in Bogotá, Medellín and Sao Paulo.

56.

Montoya-Robledo

(2011) La CAN y Colombia: normativa sobre migraciones laborales internacionales desde una perspectiva de género: el caso de las mujeres. Uniandes-CESO. Bogota: Univeridad de los Andes.

57.

Montoya-Robledo

(2020) Latin America’s 17 Million Domestic Workers Need Better Transit. Direct Lines Can Help. The City Fix. Washington, DC: World Resources Institude.

58.

Montoya-Robledo

(2021, October 12). Lo bueno, lo malo y lo feo del POT para las trabajadoras domésticas. La Silla Vacía. Bogota: La Silla Vacia.

59.

Montoya Robledo

(2019) “Uno Se Resigna a Que El Transporte Es Así”: Trabajadoras domésticas Sindicalizadas Atravesando Medellín. Revista CS.

60.

Montoya Robledo

Escovar Alvarez

(2020) Domestic workers’ commutes in Bogotá: transportation, gender and social exclusion. Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice.

61.

Montoya

(2019) “Uno se resigna a que el transporte es así”: trabajadoras domésticas sindicalizadas atravesando Medellín. Revista CS 79–109. DOI: 10.18046/recs.iespecial.3173.

62.

Morales

Galvis

Ramos-Bonilla

, et al. (2017) Exposure to particulate pollution in transportation microenvironments in Bogotá, Colombia. Journal of Transport & Health 5.

63.

Moscoso

López

Montoya

, et al. (2020) Mujeres y transporte en Bogotá: las cuentas 2018. Bogota: Despacio, WF.

64.

Nordelta: las empleadas domésticas denuncian que no las dejan tomar combis con propietarios (2018, November 21) El Clarín. Argentina: El Clarin.

65.

Odekanle

Fakinle

Akeredolu

, et al. (2016) Personal exposures to particulate matter in various modes of transport in Lagos city, Nigeria. Cogent Environmental Scince 2. DOI: 10.1080/23311843.2016.1260857

66.

Osorio Pérez

(2018) Dinamica Sectorial del Trabajo Doméstico Remunerado en Colombia. In El Trabajo Doméstico en Colombia: Historias tras las cortinas. Medellin: Escuela Nacional Sindical, 53–149.

67.

Oviedo

Titheridge

(2016) Mobilities of the periphery: Informality, access and social exclusion in the urban frindge in Colombia. Journal of Transport GeographyTransport Geography 55: 152–164.

68.

Pickup

(1984) Women’s Gender-Role and its Influence on their Travel Behaviour. Built Environment 10(1).

69.

Pineda Duque

(2010) Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press. Familia posmoderna popular, masculinidades y economía del cuidado. Revista Latinoamericana de Estudios de Familia 2(252). Seminario Politicas Conciliatorias y Economia del Cuidado, Universidad de la Salle. Alcaldia Mayor de Bogota, Oficina de Mujer y Generos. Bogota.

70.

Pineda

(2006) Economía del cuidado y conciliación: reflexiones y evidencias para Colombia.

71.

Pulido

De Lara

(2018) Reimagining “justice” in environmental justice: radical ecologies, decolonial thought and Black Radical Tradition. Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space 1: 76–98.

72.

Queirós Margarida Marques da Costa

(2012) Knowledge on gender dimensions of transportation in Portugal. Dialogue and Universalism 3(1).

73.

Restrepo

(2018) Interview with Expert. Medellin.

74.

Rivera

(2010) Gender and transport experiences of marketplace workers in Davao City, Philippines. Environment and Urbanization ASIA 1(2): 171–186.

75.

Román

Gómez Llano

Sanchez

(2018). Interview with Experts. Medellin.

76.

Sally ** (2018) Interview with domestic Worker. Bogota.

77.

Sánchez de Madariaga

(2013). From women in transport to gender in transport: challenging conceptual frameworks for improved policymaking. Journal of International Affairs 67(1): 43–65.

78.

Sandoval

(2018) Interview with Expert. Bogota.

79.

Sang

O’Kelly

Kwan

M-P

(2011) Examining commuting patterns: results from a journey-to-work model disaggregated by gender and occupation. Urban Studies 48(5). DOI: 10.1177/0042098010368576

80.

Schragger

(2016) City Power: Urban Governance in a Global Age. New York: Oxford University Press.

81.

Secretaría Distrital de Ambiente . (2010). Plan Decenal de Descontaminación del Aire para Bogotá. Bogota: Secretaria Distrital de Ambiente.

82.

Soto Villagrán

(2013) Repensar las prácticas espaciales: ruptura y continuidades en la experiencia cotidiana de mujeres urbanas en la Ciudad de México. Revista Latinoamericana de Geografía y Género 4(2): 2–12.

83.

Soto Villagrán

(2019) Análisis de la movilidad, accesibilidad y seguridad de las mujeres en tres Centros de Transferencia Modal (CETRAM) de la Ciudad de México. Washington, DC: Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo.

84.

Steingraber

(2010) Living Downstream: An Ecologist’s Personal Investigation of Cancer and the Environment. 2nd edition.

85.

Suárez

Mesías

Iglesisas

, et al. (2014) Personal exposure to particulate matter in commuters using di ff erent transport modes (bus, bicycle, car and subway) in an assigned route in downtown Santiago, Chile. Environ Sci: Processes Impacts 16: 1309–1317. DOI: 10.1039/c3em00648d.

86.

Suchman

Mertz

(2010). Toward a new legal empiricism: empirical legal studies and new legal realism. Annual Review of Law and Social Science 6: 555–579.

87.

Swistun

(2018) Cuerpos abyectos. Paisajes de contaminación y la corporización de la desigualdad ambiental. Investigaciones Geográficas 56: 100–113.

88.

Thabethe

NDL

Engelbrecht

Wright

, et al. (2014) Human health risks posed by exposure to PM10 for four life stages in a low socio-economic community in South Africa. The Pan African Medical Journal 18.

89.

Tizziani

(2011) Estrategias sindicales e iniciativas estatales en el sector del servicio doméstico en la ciudad de Buenos Aires: el impulso y sus límites. Sociedade e Cultura 14(1): 87–97.

90.

U.S. EPA (2011) Exposure Factors Handbook 2011 Edition (Final Report). Washington, DC: Environmental Protection Agency. DOI: EPA/600/R-09/052F.

91.

Whyte

(2018, April). White Allies, Let’s Be Honest about decolonization. YES! Magazine. Bainbridge Island, Washington: Yes Magazine.

92.

World Health Organization (2018). Ambient (Outdoor) Air Quality and Health. World Health Organization.

93.

Wright

(2001) Desire and prosthetics of supervision: a case of maquiladora flexibility. Cultural Anthropology 16(3): 354–373.

94.

Wright

(2006). Disposable Women and Other Myths of Global Capitalism. New York, London: Routledge.