Women working as truckers face a host of challenges in a traditionally male-dominated industry, the majority of whom say they’ve experienced discrimination on the job.
Of more than 700 women truckers surveyed by the nonprofit American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI) in 2023, roughly one in six said they experience harassment or discrimination based on their gender on a daily basis, while more than two-thirds said they’ve been discriminated against or harassed at least once. Additionally, 31% said that they believe it’s harder to be a truck driver as a women because of the negative attitudes other drivers, motor carriers, and shippers have about them.
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Women also identified several other issues they regularly cope with more often than men. Of the 12 daily problems drivers – both men and woman — highlighted in the ATRI’s survey, women dealt with 11 of them more frequently than men. That included limited access to exercise facilities (42% of women, 30% of men), less access to safe parking (41% of women, 31% of men), and limited access to restrooms (39% of women, 23% of men).
The ATRI says that part of the problem can traced to a lack of representation, given that women made up less than 7% of truckers in the U.S. in 2023, and just 3% of Class 7 and 8 drivers (which includes vehicles such as street sweepers, garbage trucks, and heavy-duty semi-trucks). This is despite the fact that women truckers “were safer than their male counterparts in every statistically significant category, as documented by fewer crashes, convictions and violations,” according to traffic data analyzed by the ATRI in 2022.
The ATRI also pointed to progress bringing younger women into the fold, finding that the number of women drivers between 25-29 years old increased by more than 41% from 2014 to 2018.
