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Sustainable transport is often defined according to energy efficiency and environmental impacts. With global approval during Habitat III, however, a set of Sustainable Development Goals have become the focus for human development until 2030, underlining the relevance of health, equity and other social issues.

These goals raise the challenge of achieving significant progress towards ‘transport justice’ in diverse societies and contexts. While exclusion occurs for different reasons, discrimination, based on cultural roles, combines with sexual harassment and other mobility barriers to limit women’s mobility. This makes gender an area of particular interest and potential insight for considering equity within sustainability and its social components.

Using data from Metropolitan Santiago to ground a conceptual exploration, this chapter examines the equity implications of women’s travel patterns and sustainable transport. Key findings underline the importance of considering non-work trip purposes and achieving better land-use combinations to accommodate care-oriented trips. Moreover, barriers linked to unsafe public transport environments limit women’s mobility and, therefore, their participation. Women account for a disproportionately high number of walking trips, a situation that can be interpreted as ‘greater sustainability’ in terms of energy use and emissions, but suggests significant inequalities in access. Environmental and economic sustainability gains may be achieved at a high social cost, unless specific measures are taken.

The research and practices associated to expand the use of active travel have shown extensive benefits on the overall assessment of well-being. However, cycling is still unequal considering age and gender. Therefore, further research is needed for contributing to the wider and more inclusive use of the bicycle for women.

The chapter aims to explore and differentiate the emotive and instrumental subjective well-being (SWB) factors that make cycling especially favourable for women, contributing to their general well-being. The chapter also inquiries about the factors that expand women’s opportunities as consequence of cycling.

The research is focussed in the context of Latin American cities, building on the experience of experts in Santiago, Bogotá, Buenos Aires and Mexico City. These cities have had a substantial increase in urban cycling, and yet low rates of cycling women when compared to men.

The nature of the research is qualitative as it considers semi-structured interviews with 21 women experts from non-governmental organisations, academia, government and cycling organisations. The questions have been framed under the concepts of the SWB, considering emotive and instrumental factors.

The findings show that self-esteem, freedom, empowerment and happiness are some of the emotive factors that have emerged from the analysis of interviews. On the side of instrumental factors, cycling emerges as relevant for women’s care role, entrance to the labour market and for strengthening social relationships leading to the promotion of social capital. Social factors have also emerged, mostly related to the advantages of socialisation, democracy and cycling as a political symbol.