Document Type
Book Chapter
Publication Date
January 2019
Journal
Transport Connectivity: A Gender Perspective
Abstract
Women choose to work in the transport sector for the same reasons that men do: for decent incomes, good benefits, company reputation, availability of work and opportunities to build careers. Yet, women accounted for less than 15% of the global transportation workforce in 2017. Women’s under-representation in this sector is largely attributable to transportation being a non-traditional occupation (NTO) for women. An NTO is any occupation in which women or men comprise less than 25% of the workforce. Thus, nursing and primary education, for example, are NTOs for men in most OECD countries whereas mining, construction and transportation are NTOs for women. Some occupations within these sectors (for example, human resources, administrative, clerical and financial services) may have more than 25% (or even 50%) female workers, but women tend to be a minority in the engineering, operations and trades segments of these sectors and also in management, senior leadership and on boards of directors. Often this is because experience in engineering and operations is considered a prerequisite for senior leadership. Thus, although female executives may be reasonably well represented across a range of roles in the transport sector, including human resources and finance, they are often a minority on boards and senior leadership. A review of the existing literature on women’s employment in transportation enables us not just to understand challenges and opportunities for the recruitment, retention and advancement of women, but also to identify best practices and policy recommendations for closing the gender gap. These are described in this chapter.