Between 2023 and mid- 2025 the ETF carried out an EU co-funded project on women in transport, looking at the green and digital transformation of the sector (twin transition), its impact on women employment and possible opportunities for attracting more women to the transport sector.
The transport sector is characterized by occupational segregation. Only 22% of transport workers are women. Occupational segregation (the systemic exclusion of women) occurs across all transport modes. In the light of increasing lack of personnel in the transport sector this is an unacceptable neglect of expertise and talent and it harms the sector.
Furthermore, the transport sector will undergo fundamental changes in the coming decades. That can create further challenges for women employment in transport but also opportunities.
The green transition of the transport sector defined in the European Green Deal with the aim to achieve climate neutrality by 2050 will impact all transport modes and requires beside technological changes a different approach to mobility. To guarantee a just transition it must include the needs and the vision of women transport workers. The same is relevant for the digital transition. It can provide new opportunities for women in transport but there is no gender-neutral technology. The specific needs of women must be included in the definition of policies and design of technologies.
The project aimed to understand the gender specific dimension of the green and digital transformation of the transport sector, to better define gender responsive transport policies and transport social policies with the aim to make the transport sector more attractive for women and to develop policy recommendations to feed into the ETFs political lobbying and in the sectoral social dialogue.
With the support of our external expert, Fondazione Giacomo Brodolini (FGB), the ETF organized four workshops in Brussels/Belgium (setting the scene), Split/Croation (digital transformation), Stockholm/Sweden (green transformation) and Antalya/Turkey (conclusions and policy recommendations).
The FGB produced
- an analytical report on “Women in Transport and the Twin Transition” including good practice examples;
- Three fact sheets as awareness raising tools on ‘Women in transport and climate change’, ‘Women in transport and digitalisation’, “Women in transport and how to eliminate gender-based violence’;
- Recommendations addressed to policy makers and to employers.
The overall outcome shows that although the digitalization and automation of the transport sector is threatening many women jobs in transport, there are opportunities for women. But those opportunities do not materialize by themselves. Active public policy at all political levels and at company level is necessary. The report and the recommendations make a lot of suggestions.
