Urban mobility is critical in shaping access to essential services and opportunities, particularly in rapidly growing cities such as Dhaka, Bangladesh. Gendered constraints, compounded by socio-cultural norms, safety concerns, and inadequate infrastructure, limit women's ability to fully benefit from public transport systems. Using data from 1548 online survey respondents, this study investigates the psychological empowerment of MRT commuters in Dhaka, with a specific focus on the interplay of socio-cultural and psychological factors influencing mobility. By applying a Bayesian Belief Network (BBN) model, the study examines how various demographic, behavioural, and contextual variables, including safety perceptions, cultural norms, and travel habits, contribute to psychological empowerment. The research highlights those socio-cultural constraints, such as cultural norms and gendered social expectations, serve as significant predictors of psychological empowerment, alongside mobility behaviors like trip frequency and mode of transport. Descriptive analysis reveals that a substantial proportion of women (74%) are infrequent users of the MRT, with many reporting cultural restrictions and safety concerns that limit their travel autonomy. However, model-based findings suggest that actual mobility behaviors, such as frequent use and access mode, have a stronger influence on psychological empowerment than perceived safety or risk. These findings diverge from traditional Western models, where empowerment is often linked to perceived security, by illustrating that empowerment in Dhaka is more closely tied to the accessibility and reliability of the MRT system offering new insights into the dynamics of psychological empowerment in a Global South context, providing gender-disaggregated evidence for targeted policy interventions aimed at improving commuter experiences.
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