Women in Trucking: Carriers need to recognize 'unconscious bias' to recruit, retain more female drivers

8/27/2021

Ellen Voie is an internationally recognized speaker and authority on gender diversity and inclusion (D&I) for women working in nontraditional careers in transportation. As founder of the Women In Trucking Association (WIT) in March of 2007, Voie serves as the nonprofit organization’s president and chief executive officer. The WIT was formed to promote the employment of women in the trucking industry, to remove obstacles that might keep them from succeeding, and to celebrate the successes of its members.

Voie recently responded via email to questions from Senior Associate Editor Julie Sneider on efforts to recruit and retain more women in the trucking industry.

RailPrime: What percentage of the trucking industry workforce do women represent? How has that changed over the past five years?

Ellen Voie: In 2021, women made up 41% of the supply-chain workforce — including warehousing — according to a recent study by Gartner. Unfortunately, very few records were established in the past except for the professional driver data. In 2000, women made up 4.7%; in 2015, female drivers were at 5.1 % of the workforce. Today they are at 7.8%.

RailPrime: The trucking industry is facing a serious shortage of drivers, which exacerbates supply-chain problems. [According to the latest data from the American Trucking Associations, the trucking industry was short 60,800 drivers as of late 2018. If not addressed, that shortage could swell to more than 160,000 drivers nationally by 2028.] How do D&I efforts help to address the shortage?

Voie: Since women make up half the population, it would make sense to turn to this demographic to help increase the number of commercial drivers. Women are still only 10% of the driving force (over the road). Women are not only capable of filling this need, they are valued and encouraged.

RailPrime: Where do D&I issues fall on the scale of the industry’s most pressing concerns? How have trucking companies’ efforts toward gender equity and diversity changed in recent years?

Voie: We recently launched a Diversity & Inclusion Survey to start benchmarking the trucking industry. Some companies are proud of their D&I efforts and share their data, but other companies are not as sensitive to the need to be more inclusive. Right now, D&I does not seem to be a priority [for the industry], but it is gaining some traction. We work hard to share data to justify the need to be more inclusive, such as data that indicates higher net profits [occur at companies] when the leadership team better represents all people.

RailPrime: What more should trucking companies be doing — or what can they do — to encourage more women to enter the industry?

Voie: Carriers need to be more aware of the unconscious bias in place. They need to talk to their current drivers and managers to see how they can have a more female-friendly environment. Sometimes it's as simple as ordering women’s uniforms or ensuring enough or easily accessible restrooms exist in their facilities.

Carriers also need to review their recruiting materials to ensure the graphics and the wording don’t preclude women with phrases such as: “We’ll get you home to your wife. ...” Trucking companies need to show women in leadership roles and highlight the women who are already employed to share their stories.

RailPrime: What are the biggest obstacles to getting more women to consider the trucking/logistics industry as a career? And what are the major obstacles to making sure they stay?

Voie: We’ve found that 83% of women enter the trucking industry (as drivers) because they were influenced by a family member or friend. They are looking for a secure and dependable income.

Some of the reasons women leave trucking are due to safety concerns. We need to ensure that all women feel safe, whether they are in the cab of a truck or in a warehouse or terminal. We asked female drivers to tell us how safe they feel on a scale of one to 10, and the average response was 4.4. This means they feel safe less than half the time, and that is unacceptable.

This has to change, and we are working on the issue. We need to make sure women feel safe when they’re doing their job.

RailPrime: Describe Women in Trucking’s current efforts to encourage more women to join the industry. How has the organization’s mission or focus changed over its history?

Voie: Our goal is and has been (since 2007) to increase the presence of women in the trucking industry. Our focus is on all women in the industry, from driver to technician, from manager to director. Most of our programs are aimed at doing this, but I’ll mention a few recent initiatives:

• We will soon be rolling out our “Driver Ambassador” program. It will be a branded tractor- trailer driven by a female driver to schools, conferences and other events. It will be a hands-on learning environment and include a simulator.

• We have both U.S. and Canadian “Image Teams” to give media interviews, product reviews and, most importantly, ride-alongs to legislators, regulators and the media to raise awareness.

• To attract the next generation, we’ve created a Girl Scout patch and wrote the curriculum for earning the patch. The curriculum includes an activity book titled “Scouting For Cookies,” so children can make a connection between the trucks that haul the Girl Scout cookies to the trucks they see on the road. We’ve also created Clare, the truck driver doll to introduce children to the industry.

• We also host our annual conference, which represents one of our biggest networking opportunities. In 2019, our most recent in-person event, the conference attracted over 1,100 registered attendees.