Women and men have different types of responsibilities and opportunities within the family and society. Women do most of the essential, but unpaid housework and the ‘care’ work involved in raising children, looking after adults who are ill or have disabilities, and helping older relatives and neighbours to manage their lives. Men's main responsibility is as the ‘breadwinner’, earning a wage to support their families. Elements of this ‘breadwinner’ arrangement of family life have been changing in recent decades. Most women now combine their domestic responsibilities with paid employment, often in part-time jobs, and it is now more socially accepted for women to have jobs when raising their children than in earlier decades. Many women are also lone parents, where the tasks of raising income and providing care are rolled into one. Yet the widely held social expectation is still that men should be the main earners and women the main carers in families (Brannen et al., 1994: 32–34; Warin et al., 1999). At the same time unemployment, job insecurity and widening wage inequalities in Britain mean that it is more difficult for men to fulfil the ‘breadwinning’ role. Men with few qualifications, men from ethnic minorities and those living in economically depressed areas are the most likely to be unemployed or constrained to low-paid and precarious employment opportunities. Men in these situations are under considerable pressure as they feel unable to meet the widely held expectation that they should provide for their families (Warin et al., 1999).

A number of studies have shown how gender inequalities within family life, labour markets and civic activities shape women's and men's experiences of living in cities (e.g., Bondi and Christie, 1997; Booth et al., 1996; Hanson and Pratt, 1995; Little et al., 1988; Taylor et al., 1996). Women are generally more geographically restricted to their neighbourhood than men and spend more of their lives in this locality due to the demands on their time associated with looking after children, other adults and housework. They travel shorter distances to work than men and are more dependent on very local job opportunities due to the combination of domestic responsibilities and lower incomes which constrain their access to transport (Tivers, 1988). As a result, the quality of their lives is shaped by local services and public transport more directly than men's.