Leading women in the transport sector discuss women and transport.

A ‘Women and Transport’ session put on by the Parliamentary Outreach team earlier this week featured four women speakers who either work in the transport industry or have ties to it. 

It was attended  by over 50 people, mainly women who worked in or were affiliated with the transport industry, and it took place at the Institute of Civil Engineers (ICE) in London.

After a welcome from Labour MP Louise Ellman, chair of the House of Commons Transport Committee – and who confirmed that there was still in imbalance of women within the transport industry – Alison Munro, chief executive of the somewhat controversial HS2 (high speed rail network) took the stand.

As the meeting was focusing on women in transport, the controversy over HS2 was not mentioned. Instead Munro outlined how jobs in the transport industry can look off-putting to women, and she told us, that when she started she was often the only woman in the room.

However, she went on to say that HS2 is currently offering graduate opportunities, career advice and tremendous opportunities for women.

Despite this, Munro did say that the industry needed to start attracting women from school age on, for as ‘transport touches our lives in many ways’, Munro felt that women’s involvement was essential in shaping an inclusive transport network.

Next up was Sheila Holden, the – first woman – president of the Chartered Institute of Highways and Transportation (CIHT).

For her, transport is a fundamental reality of everyone’s lives, and so is much more than ‘just infrastructure’.

She outlined how she felt that women have specific transport needs, and that women are needed in the industry in order to bring specific perspectives to the table.

Apparently the UK has the lowest number of women engineers in the European Union, and it is only in the last 15-25 years that this country has begun to think more holistically about transport in terms of multi-modal journeys.

Holden also told us how when she applied to become a chartered engineer, there had only been one other woman who had taken the course and she was told this woman ‘failed the course’.

She also told us how, when she she applied for a transport job several years ago, she sat through the interview but was then told that the job was only open to men.

Camilla Ween, the president of the Women’s Transportation Seminar (WTS) – an organisation which focuses on advancing women in transportation – then took the stand and talked about the support her organisation offers to women, including advice, mentoring and support, confidence building and access to networks. WTS also runs workshops and seminars to encourage women’s involvement in the transport sector.

For Ween, adequate maternity leave arrangements are a key area which needs to change if women are to make significant inroads in redressing the gender balance in the industry, as women often do not return to work because of the inflexible working patterns.

She also pointed out that organisations that do practice flexible working pattern have reported a  76 per cent improvement in retention of staff and an increase in the quality of the work carried out.

Moving on from this, Ween talked about how important the transition points – where people are changing from one transport mode to another –  within transport networks are.

She also wondered if the transport network was welcoming to women in terms of design and felt that poor design can make travelling much more complicated than it needs to be.

The most obvious problems (among many) related to women travelling on public transport with children and lone travellers finding themselves waiting at or exiting badly lit railway stations.

The final speaker was Val Shawcross CBE, chair of the Greater London Assembly’s  Transport Committee.

Shawcross pointed out that there was a very successful lobbying group for car users and that the cycling lobby was  having an impact, but that pedestrians and bus users were often simply not heard.

This is exacerbated by the media’s lack of focus on these two groups – possibly because they, especially pedestrians, offer business little or no profit margin.

As an example she pointed out who gets the road space if traffic smoothing is needed and how this tends not to be  pedestrians: it is much more likely that traffic lights will be adjusted to make pedestrians wait longer.

Alarmingly, she also reported that there has been a 15 per cent rise in pedestrian accidents in London.

Returning to public transport users, she outlined what hostile environments buses and trains can be to those who need to travel in a wheelchair, have buggies, or are older users, because of overcrowding.

In short, she felt that there is a lack of route planning and coherent ticketing policies and not enough consultation with women.

The session was followed by questions from the floor.

One of these was whether positive discrimination is needed to up the numbers of women.

The panel did not think this was a good idea as they wanted to be appointed because of their talent rather than their gender and advocated targets and awareness raising instead.

The obvious – but not voiced – rebuttal to this is that men are already appointed for their gender, and it is about time women had the same privilege.

Another audience member asked how attractive can jobs in the industry be if there are no existing roles models, and one suggestion was that the transport industry develop an employment index for women at work, similar to the one that Stonewall uses to track employment of the most gay-friendly workplaces.

Another question concerned how to make the links stronger between health and public transport, and apparently the London transport system TfL has now appointed a public health psychologist to work with its employees.

Finally, again relating to health, the feeling was that there is a need to improve walking and cycling options to make it easier for these to be part of an active life and that the design of roads and pavements needed to focus on making it as easy as possible for these activities to take place.

The comments at the session reflected some of the issues that have informed Metpex (MEasurement Tool to determine the quality of Passenger EXperience), an EU research project led by Coventry University, which is aiming to develop and evaluate a standardised tool to measure passenger experience across whole journeys.

The results of this research will be used to help policy makers provide inclusive, passenger-oriented integrated transport systems that are accessible by everybody.

At the time of writing, those of us working on Metpex are considering which variables to include in the tool. Part of my role is to ensure that equality and diversity issues are taken into account, for example by including variables relating to class, race, age, disability and gender.

Meanwhile, this was an interesting session and it was good to see that the gender imbalance is recognised as an issue by the transport industry.

We can only hope that more women get involved.

As a Research Fellow at Coventry University, part of Jane Osmond’s remit is research into integrated transport solutions within the Integrated Transport and Logistics group.  As such she was asked to attend this ‘Women and Transport’ session put on by the Parliamentary Outreach team.