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• Gender plays an important role in activity participation and travel.
• Women tend to travel less than men in terms of both number of trips and total time spent traveling.
• Women are the ones who make more child-serving stops.
• Women tend to travel by car more as passengers, whereas men tend to be drivers.
• Travel choices are constrained by the income and personal responsibilities of the residents.

The purpose of this study is to extend the research on gendered differences in travel patterns in the Arab world by an in-depth study of the interrelationship of travel-related activities and various socio-economic and demographic characteristics. This study is based on a unique data set that includes activity and travel diaries collected from three Arab communities in the Galilee region of Israel. Through descriptive statistics and nonlinear structural equations modeling, we found that gender plays an important role in both activity participation and travel behavior in these communities. Women tend to travel less than men in terms of both number of tours, defined as chain of trip segments that start and end at home, trips, and total time spent traveling. Women tend to work more within their communities and to conduct more of their activities by walking; they are also the ones who make more child-serving stops, which affect their travel patterns. Women tend to travel by car more as passengers, whereas men tend to be drivers. Those who made more tours also tended to make more complex tours, with more stops per tour, although, in general, complex tours are not substituted for making additional tours. People who work outside the community and make complex tours are more likely to drive, as the car is needed for these types of trips, which men make more than women.

From a policy perspective, these findings suggest that public transportation services are needed to help overcome gender differences in travel behavior. Improving transit service for school trips and improving urban design through a friendlier environment, especially for children, will beneficially affect the complexity of women’s daily activity patterns and their quality of life.

Achieving gender equality is a challenge for all states – but particularly for those in the Middle East. The Arab Human Development Report (UNDP 2006) highlights the multiple ways that gender equality continues to lag behind in the region when compared with the rest of the world. Some of the most difficult challenges concern elected office; women are roughly one in ten of the members of Arab parliaments (9.7%), roughly half the world average (18.4%). (IPU 2009) This pattern persists although some significant breakthroughs have occurred in particular states, notably the adoption and implementation of reserved seats in Morocco and candidate gender quotas in Iraq (Norris 2007). But the problem is not simply the lack of women’s voices in the highest echelons of power. Most governments in the Middle East have now formally endorsed, with reservations, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), pledging to establish women’s rights.1 Yet the Arab Human Development Report documents that the region has some of the high rates of female illiteracy, and the lowest rate of female labor force participation, in the world. Women in the region encounter serious problems of basic health care, educational access, and income poverty, as well as suffering from exposure to violence, limited legal rights, and lack of access to justice. These conditions are compounded by problems of social exclusion, the curtailment of fundamental freedoms, and lack of democracy.

Petroleum perpetuates patriarchy? Any observers looking at the limited rights which women face in some of the major oil‐rich states, such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, might easily be persuaded that there could indeed be a strong linkage. But a more detail analysis of the evidence suggests that structural accounts of gender inequality have always suffered from several major flaws, and the petroleum patriarchy thesis does not stand up to scrutiny. It seems more plausible to conclude that long‐standing religious traditions leave an enduring mark on the norms and beliefs, the attitudes and values, which characterize different societies. These cultural values leave a deep imprint upon the way that men and women see the most appropriate division of labor for men and women in the home, family and public sphere – including the contemporary role of women in elected office. Thus Buddhist and Confucian, Catholic and Protestant, Hindu and Muslim societies each display certain distinctive ideas about gender and sexuality –and these values continue to leave an imprint on the lives of women and men, even when post‐industrial societies become more secular in orientation. Active engagement in Protestantism has thus gradually dwindled and died out in Scandinavian countries (Norris and Inglehart 2004), including involvement in religious services and organizations, as well as adherence to the importance of religion in people’s lives. Nevertheless the legacy of religious traditions continues to be evident in contemporary Scandinavian values.  

Agenda 2030 and the Sustainable Development Goals, which were adopted by all member states of the United Nations in 2015, describe a universal agenda that applies to and must be implemented by all countries, both developed and developing. Sound metrics and data are critical for turning the SDGs into practical tools for problem-solving by (i) mobilizing governments, academia, civil society, and business; (ii) providing a report card to track progress and ensure accountability; and (iii) serving as a management tool for the transformations needed to achieve the SDGs by 2030. We are encouraged that countries around the world, including the G20, are aligning long-term development strategies with the SDGs. Similarly, business and other non-government stakeholders are increasingly working towards the SDGs as operational goals. 

To track the SDGs, the UN Statistics Commission has recommended over 230 official indicators. Of these, some 150 have well-established definitions, but not all have data for all UN member states (UN Statistics Division, 2017). Countries are invited to submit voluntary national reviews of their progress to the High-Level Political Forum. A first review of reports submitted so far (Bizikova and Pinter, 2017) found that countries report best on socioeconomic SDGs (health, education, gender equality, infrastructure, decent work, and economic growth). In contrast, reporting was particularly weak on the environmental SDGs 12-15 and goal 17 (international partnership). To complement the official SDG Indicators and voluntary country-led follow-up and review processes, the Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) and Bertelsmann Stiftung issued a first global unofficial SDG Index and Dashboards in 2016 (Sachs et al., 2016). That report synthe- sized metrics with available data – based whenever possible on the official SDG indicators – to enable countries to take stock of where they stood in 2016 with regards to fulfilling the SDGs and to help countries set priorities for early action. 

To help fill a major gap in last year’s report and in SDG dis- cussions more generally, we focus this year’s report on countries’ global responsibilities and international spillover effects in achieving the SDGs. Such spillovers must be understood and measured since countries cannot achieve the goals if others do not do their part. For example, rising sea levels will submerge Small Island Developing States (SIDS) unless all countries curb greenhouse gas emissions, and African elephants and rhinos face extinction unless demand for ivory and horns is curbed outside of Africa. Poor countries require increased Official Development Assistance to co-finance the investments needed to achieve the Goals, and all countries must avoid a race to the bottom on taxation and transparency to protect the public revenues required to finance the goals. Only if such positive and negative spillovers across countries are managed carefully can the promise of Agenda 2030 be ful- filled, particularly since negative effects tend to flow from rich to poor countries. 

A PhD in biomedical science and the critical thinking skills that it provides can open the door to many different careers. The current popular scientific press and blogosphere too often portray the job of a research-intensive faculty member and principal investigator (PI) as both unattainable and undesirable. We want to make sure our trainees include our own career path among their options, as for each of us it has been a fantastic, family-friendly, and highly impactful career. 

It is worrisome, we may be disproportionately discouraging women and those from underrepresented groups at a time when our nation needs all of its talent to meet global challenges. While our job, like all jobs, has plusses and minuses, I feel so glad to be in this flexible, creative, and impactful profession.

Each day presents itself with a mixture of totally different challenges that continue to stretch me as a scientist and a person. On any given day, I may first see my kids off to school, then Skype with someone across the planet about a collaboration, look at microscopy data with a grad student, meet colleagues for a departmental strategic planning meeting, coach an undergrad on study habits, and then give a postdoc feedback on their grant proposal. I’m sure your days look like this, too.

There are vanishingly few careers that give you the creative space to run a small business based on your own ideas, the independence to manage a team of bright people on your own, the ability to contribute to future generations of your intellectual family, and the flexibility to show up for your actual family when they need it. Like any entrepreneurial effort, choosing our career meant we face significant challenges of finding funds to keep the lab open and identifying and training the right team. However, having friends in other high-skill jobs, from medicine, to law, to running a small business, to working in industry, I know that none of these careers is without its stressors, and most don’t come close to matching the flexibility and independence we have.