Great Western Coffee Shop

If you're fed up with rushing around doing Christmassy stuff, you could sit down with a cup of coffee and answer a question for me!

It occurred to me that there still does not appear to be a huge number of women working on the railways.  I'm thinking less in terms of the traditional type of female roles of booking clerks, canteen workers etc, more the 'action' end, like engine drivers, linesmen etc.  Also, there appears to be many more men than women on this forum, if the user names are anything to go by.

Being a bit of a feminist I have watched with glee, (and a degree of envy)over the years, as women increasingly went into careers previously male dominated.

If my statement in the second paragraph here is correct, I wonder why this is?  Someone may be able to provide me with some information to either contradict my statement, or explain why the drift into railways by women has been slower than in other trraditional male roles?

An interesting question, and quite thought provoking.

There are a lot of female Train Managers, and I see quite a few drivers as well. So maybe not as heavily dominated as you might think, particularly amongst more recent recruits. One thing to note is that for many people a job on the railway is one for life, so although society is changing, the workforce will still be heavily made up of those recruited in a generation when things were different. Thus overall change will be slower than in other industries where turnover is greater.

I suspect one underlying reason is that shift work does not lend itself to those returning to work post maternity. Childcare arrangements only tend to be available during the day, so maybe more tricky to balance?



 

There are a number of Train Managers I know who are on what are termed "domestic links" - where their shifts are family friendly.  It means they work only certain days a week or hours of the day.  It recognises that a lot of staff want to keep their hand in while bringing up children and perhaps return full time once that becomes possible.

Years ago, a train company did a recruitment campaign for train drivers, but exclusively advertised in women's magazines.

The result? The same ratio of male and female candidates applying as usual. I was told that feedback from male candidates was that the vacancies had been seen by female partners/relatives/friends and forward on, as opposed to the females taking any particular interest.

I just think that women in general aren't interested in being train drivers or even the railway in general. As a train driver, I think I could count on one hand the number of female train spotters I've ever seen.

The railway is very welcoming to female employees. They have exactly the same T&Cs and pay as their male colleagues, and how many other industries can boast that?

It's like the question as to why there are so few males as primary school teachers or working in care homes. I think it simply doesn't appeal to men! Equality doesn't have to mean being 50/50 for the sake of it.

Certainly plenty of female Train Managers/Conductors/Guards out there. See them on a regular basis. Catering staff in buffets (including the Travelling Chefs) and on trolleys is probably close to a 50/50 split and there may even be greater percentage of female.

Female drivers are becoming more common, although this is still very much a male preserve.

Female permanent way staff ('linesmen') are very few and far between. This isn't unique to the rail industry though. Engineering and manual labour jobs rarely attract female applicants.

And just as an anecdote. On my most recent trip on my local line, all three staff (driver, conductor, ticket examiner) were female.



All of them I hope. Otherwise they are breaking the law.

I appreciate that proving, as a female, that you have worse pay and conditions isn't always easy.

In one of the railway S&T design offices I worked in with about 35 employees the proportion of females to males was about 50/50 (and that was in the mid-1980s) ;)

Throughout my long (perhaps too long) career I have always tried to encourage females to work in the S&T discipline, and even recently have had some minor success with that as my Daughter now works in a design office ;D

On a recent Pullman Restaurant I travelled on, all the staff were ladies except the chef! ;D ;D

That'd be the one where we had Caroline as Team Leader wouldn't it?

Indeed - and another excellent meal it was too!

In projects we have quite a few women mostly as project managers, commercial mangers etc there are a number of female project engineers.  The senior engineer for the refurbishing there original structure of Blackfriars Bridge was female.  

Within the routes I can think of a couple of the senior engineers who are female.

There are not enough though, the female perspective on engineering is different to us males the mix of the two often produces excellent engineering.

Thank you all very much for your interest and information!   :)

Electric Train, your fascinating comment that women think differently to men in terms of engineering has me intrigued.  As it would be said on an A-Level exam paper - 'Discuss!

I was interested to read about the railway career adverts appearing in womens' magazines, too.  But I don't agree that it's the nature of the work that discourages women from working in the 'outdoor' or physical end of the railways.  After all, there are lots more women now working in farming, landscape gardening, as HGV drivers and in the construction industry, so we're not all worried about messing up our hair and breaking fingernails!

I don't necessarily think it's down to awkward shift patterns turning women away either; I was a nurse for most of my working life, the hours in that job are about as unsocial as they come; you just find ways of jiggling childcare around them.

I entirely agree that we don't need to be aiming for a 50/50 split between male/female working opportunities.  Are there jobs that certain genders dislike???  Many more men now are going into the care sector as well as the fashion/designing/sewing industries.

Not the railways but I work in IT (in the retail sector). I have always been in the minority in my team and quite often the only female  :)

 :o  That's a bit odd then, johoare?  I thought there were a lot more women now working in IT?

Hopefully it is starting to change then.. :)

Female engineers don't think any differently than their male counterparts, we all have different thinking; engineering is often wrapped up in rules, regulations, guides and processes, what female engineers do bring is a different perspective to the creative side and or problem solving of the engineering in a project.

Engineering is not just about the equations. It is about creativity and people working together.  The equations are the easy bit they don't have off-days and you can always look them up in books! A team that has people that think differently is certainly a strength on the creative side and complementary skills are a boon when it comes to actually getting the job done.  You cannot pigeon-hole people, but yes women do bring a different perspective and in doing so strengthen any male-dominated team.

Looking wider, outside the rail industry, my full time day job is in IT training.  Each week, a group of delegates learns a programming language such as Ruby, Lua or Perl off me, or how to handle the intricacies of Regular Expressions, or something like that.   Looking back to the start of this month, I have trained [[gets out fingers ..]]  6 + 4 + 3 + 2 = 15 men and 3 + 0 + 0 + 0 = 3 ladies. An all-male course is nothing to write home about, but an all-female one is.

Contrast that to my second job, where I lightly help manage the accommodation that's grown up around the IT training business and has become a hotel in its own right.  There are seven on the team (full time, part time, occasional) who can do the breakfasts, run the hotel (really manage it!), reception, checkins, decorating and maintenance, washing and ironing, stock control and so on and so forth (we make it interesting by sharing roles) and that's six ladies and one [in those roles occasional] man.

I think some of it comes to a natural disposition.  It's oft-said that "men don't have babies" so we're not so much looking at equality being "identical" but rather the provision of the same level of opportunity;  in our hotel role, we've had key male staff in the past and, yes, with the right person it works well.   But it's the person and not the gender, and the natural disposition leads to a certain skew.   Don't just take a look at our hotel experience - look also at those IT training figures a gave you; there's a number of very different organisations there - a governmental one, heavy engineering, communications and media ...

Good morning all, and thanks once again for your interesting input.

I think ellendune's comments say it all really.  Surely not just in engineering but all types of employment it is the different perspectives available in a joint-gender situation that improves the skill mix.  grahame has illustrated the same point talking about his hotel staff; sounds like a super environment in which to work, changing roles in that way.

One thing that does make me hopping mad is to be automatically landed with a stereotypical gender role:  I once volunteered my services at a function, some while back.  The co-ordinator said " oh goodie, you can make the teas and poor (man's name) who had been stuck with that task can go off and do something more interesting" 

I don't think so.   >:(

I stumbled across this article in The Telegraph today.http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/10532989/Thomas-the-Tank-Engine-needs-more-female-trains-Labour-MP-says.html

As an aside, I was recently on a Ryanair flight where the captain and first officer were both female, with all four cabin crew being male.  Things are certainly beginning to change, albeit considerably more slowly than many would hope.

Since Cynthia first posted on this topic, I've kept a list of women in senior positions on the railway. I make no claim for it to be complete, I just noted down the names (if I remembered!) when I came across them. For what it's worth:

Fiona Taylor - NR Route managing director for Kent
Dyan Crowther - NR Route Managing Director LNW
Louise Kavanagh - NR Finance Director - Group Asset Management
Anna Matthews - DeltaRail^s Chief Executive
Karen Boswell - MD, East Coast Trains
Anna Walker - Chair(person) of ORR.

There's also the excellent Sue Evans, Director of Communications at First Great Western; and Elaine Holt ... http://uk.linkedin.com/pub/elaine-holt/1b/3a0/642  ::)

Hey guys, thank you very much for taking enough interest in this subject to keep it topical.  It's great to see some women up there in top rail jobs.  However I daresay this still represents quite a small percentage of women in leading roles.  It's a start, and a very positive one, I just hope this trend continues apace.

Is it known how long these women have been in these posts? Is it a 21st century phenomenon?  I keep meaning to have a look at the RMT website to see if there are any female candidates standing for the late Bob Crow's position.  Anyone any idea?  Thanks again fellers, heartening news.

There have been women prior ... at First Great Western we had Alison Forster (joined FGW in 1980 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unIZUQVlqqg ) and Glenda Lamont (joined first in 2001 - http://www.linkedin.com/pub/glenda-lamont/5/860/112 ) - as I recall they were MD and Marketing director at the time the previous franchise's services replaced the Wessex Trains ones.   Then there's Ann Gloag at Stagecoach, who also first got involved in the early 1980s ... not sure when they got into trains too, but I think it was before she took a back seat.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1572482/Robin-Gloag.html
http://www.scottish-places.info/people/famousfirst527.html

Edit to add further data, dates and links

Thanks for that grahame, and I will look at the links you've included, tomorrow probably.

There is an interesting ongoing discussion on women as signallers here: http://forum.signalbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=6465

One of my clients used to be a Signaller on the railways (She is female) :)

Used to be?  What happened?  Perhaps she just retired......

It's not clear to me whether she's a former signaller, or a former client.  Knowing thetrout's love of pedancy and jesting with the rest of us, it could be either one of those, or indeed both.

Former Signaller on the Railway; Now in the Restaurant Business and a current client of mine :)

'In the restaurant business'!  That covers a wide range of career paths; anyway, I wonder whether this lady is happier in her current post than she was as a signaller?

From a UK Government press release (https://www.gov.uk/government/news/baroness-kramer-speaks-at-women-in-rail-conference?):

We do indeed need to remove barriers where they exist.   In terms of encouragement to the extent of positive discrimination, I'm not so sure.

I've been out and about quite a bit on the TransWilts in very recent times.  We have some excellent lady conductors ... just as we have some excellent gentleman conductors (and these days there are very few who are  anything short of excellent).   We have some excellent male drivers ... and we have some excellent female drivers.  From my place in the passenger compartment, I can't tell who's driving or which gender they are. 

I have to agree. I spent today on the TransWilts and was pleased to note we had a trainee driver, who happened to be lady, who I know used to be a West Country train manager. I was pleased to note that, after not
seeing her for a while, that she was still on the railway, but more so the fact that she was progressing her career and obviously being judged on her merits not her gender.

Hmm.  Female train drivers are still something of a minority - but they do make their mark.

Without wishing to dwell on the tragic circumstances of her death (which were unrelated to the railway), I'd like to remind you all of train driver Alison Langton.

See http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/coffeeshop/index.php?topic=3836.0

  :(

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/rachie-owen-youngest-female-train-1519148

As an interesting aside there are quite a few women flying commercial airliners these days. Indeed, back in around 2000 (can't remember the exact year) I flew on GO (now part of EasyJet) from Bristol to Barcelona and we had a 100% female crew - captain, first officer and cabin attendants.

From Crossrail Project (https://twitter.com/Crossrail/status/613292355467247616?t=1&cn=cmVjb3NfbmV0d29ya19kaWdlc3RfdHJpZ2dlcmVk&sig=8d9ca8887bb8e74fae4faa8c093ea2110b556079&al=1&refsrc=email&iid=cb8aa3126a6d4f6194a3a52d110a06d2&autoactions=1435077768&uid=27302157&nid=244+133):

From the Liverpool Echo (https://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/woman-25-challenging-gender-stereotypes-19985763)


and from the South Wales Argus (https://www.southwalesargus.co.uk/news/19142559.celebrating-transport-wales-top-female-stars-international-womens-day/)