International Women’s Day 2020: Making the transport sector fit for women workers

The United Nation theme for today’s International Women’s Day is “I am Generation Equality: Realizing Women’s Rights”. That’s exactly what the ETF is doing. We strive to make the transport industry more gender-balanced, to make sure that women transport workers are given the same opportunities as men, and to make sure that they are treated equally.

Only around 20% of the transport workforce are women and this is far too little. The persistent gender pay gap, the absence of proper sanitary facilities and toilet breaks, the toxic masculinity at work and the neglect of a safe and suitable work environment contribute to this low number.

At ETF, we are committed to shattering the glass ceiling and fighting for fair and better working conditions for women! That’s why the ETF Women’s Committee has taken a step forward in this direction by asking women transport workers from across Europe how to make the transport sector fit for them.

More than 2,770 women transport workers across Europe made their voices heard and today, we are revealing a teaser of the results of our survey:

• 50% of the respondents feel that their job does not provide them with good opportunities for promotion and development.
• 35% of the respondents are unhappy with the degree to which employers or managers fail to treat employees equally, and 23% are dissatisfied with the gender imbalance in the sector.
• 25% of the respondents think being a woman has a negative impact on their wages.
• Close to 1/3 of the respondents do not feel that their working environment supports them in doing their job well.
• 49% of the respondents think that their workplace does not prioritise a safe and adequate work environment for women. These concerns were expressed by 1/3 of women under 40 years of age; and more than half (53%) of older women workers.
• 23% of the respondents identified sanitary issues as one of the major problems in the workplace.
• The survey uncovered previously invisible forms of workplace discrimination that specifically affected women’s physical health.

Please click on the link on the right-hand side and start reading the full teaser of the findings from the ETF survey on how to make the transport sector fit for women workers.

A full report will be published in autumn 2020.