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Time for Thomasina the Tank Engine

Gender should play no part in the jobs we do, says DEBORAH REAY, chair of the women’s representatives’ committee of Aslef

ONLY one in 15 (6.5 per cent) of the train drivers in England, Scotland and Wales is a woman, while women make up a little over half (51 per cent) of the population of this country.

So why is that? Working in the rail industry — I’ve been a Tube driver for 17 years — I know there are several reasons. But one of the biggest deterrents is that driving trains is not seen as a woman’s job. It’s viewed as a man’s job.

Gender stereotyping starts from the day you are born, shaping the development of children’s ideas about what girls and boys should be.

Children are influenced by the adults in their lives, what they do in the home as well as their job forms. Toys and play are organised along rigid gender lines with boys’ toys being active and exciting and girls’ toys focused on caring and beauty roles.

If you think about trains you might think of Thomas the Tank Engine. A boy. In blue. In the original books, by the Rev W Awdry, Annie and Clarabel were, entirely predictably, Thomas’s carriages while Henrietta was Toby’s faithful coach.

So it’s no wonder that, by the age of 16, many young people have fixed ideas about career choices and, for many young women, that will mean taking the road into one of the traditional female roles of the “five Cs” — cleaning, catering, clerical, cashiering, and child care.

Making the choice to be a train driver, firefighter or professional footballer for a young woman is rare, possibly because so many young women have never met one.

Indeed, there is a long list of professions — including construction, engineering and IT — that still struggle to attract women.

Some employers have recognised this problem and a few have begun to make attempts to tackle it at source by changing recruitment ads and the composition of shortlists for interview.

But is that enough? It’s all very well actively trying to recruit more women into male-dominated occupations but there is also a responsibility on employers to ensure that workplace cultures don’t set women up to fail before they have even started.

Trade unions can play a part in the campaign against occupational segregation. We have the ability to hold the industries in which we operate, and the employers with whom we work, to account, and to push for more inclusive recruitment practices, to demand a workplace that is welcoming to all, regardless of gender, and to use our members to showcase and promote these jobs as a viable career choice for women.

Aslef has long highlighted the lack of female train drivers in our industry.

Our report, On Track with Diversity, published in June, shines a spotlight on the lack of diversity at the privatised train operating companies and freight operating companies — and challenges them to do better.

At the launch of the report its authors, Nadia Motraghi and Ijeoma Omambala, of Old Square Chambers, outlined practical recommendations for action while shadow women and equalities secretary Dawn Butler asked the white men in the room — and in the rail industry — “to use your privilege effectively to help us all improve equality and diversity.”

As a trade union, we can only recruit, as members, the people who have been employed as drivers by the privatised train operating companies and freight operating companies. We work with these companies every day to ensure they encourage women, as well as men, and black and minority ethnic, as well as white, people to become train drivers.

We believe that a train driver is a train driver is a train driver — regardless of gender, sexuality, religion or race — and we’ve been pushing companies to allow more part-time and flexible working because we know that the lack of such agreements has been a barrier in the past to women coming into our industry as many still take on the primary responsibility for child care.

In 2019 we think it’s time for Thomasina, as well as Thomas, the Tank Engine so little girls can move away from traditional gender expectations.

At a fringe meeting called Is it Still a Man’s World? at the TUC in Brighton on Monday, women members of Aslef, the Fire Brigades Union, and the Professional Footballers Association will discuss their experiences in the workplace and how, as trade unionists, we can work to end occupational segregation.

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