In The News
Women in Trucking Gender Diversity Survey
Even in 2023, there remain areas of untapped opportunities for many women in the transportation industry, and the Women In Trucking Association (WIT) aims to help in assessing additional ways to increase gender diversity.
The Women In Trucking Association is encouraging companies in transportation to complete a survey that collects data on gender diversity in the industry. The data will be used to develop this year’s version of the WIT Index, which is the official industry barometer to regularly benchmark and measure the percentage of women who are professional drivers, in corporate positions, and serve in leadership roles.
Diversity Report
WIT is requesting for-hire trucking companies, private fleets, transportation intermediaries, railroads, ocean carriers, equipment manufacturers, and technology companies to report the percentage of women in various roles of their workforce. Data reported will be kept strictly confidential and will be reported only as aggregate totals of respondents. Individuals completing the survey must be an authorized respondent from the company. Interested participants can report their data via the live survey through April 21, 2023, at womenintrucking.org/index.
Participating companies in the survey will receive an executive summary of the 2023 WIT Index at no cost, which will enable them to benchmark their gender diversity practices against other companies in transportation.
Monitoring gender diversity in a male-populated industry like transportation is critical so that statistically valid data can be used to evaluate progress made in this area.
The Numbers Tell the Story
“Since 2007, when the Women In Trucking Association was formed, the percentages of women in the industry have been rising significantly. In order to track these advancements, we created the WIT index to annually monitor the increase in female drivers, technicians, safety directors, managers, and even directors.” said Ellen Voie, president and CEO of WIT, who spearheaded the launch of the first WIT Index in 2016. “Your participation in this important survey will help us accurately track these efforts and provide benchmarking opportunities for everyone working toward a more gender diverse workforce.”
Last year, the 2022 WIT Index found that the percentage of professional drivers who are female increased to 13.7%, an uptick of more than 3% since 2019. Additionally, the report found that women make up 33.8% of C-suite executives in transportation companies, 40.5% of safety professionals, and 74.9% of human resources and talent management roles.
When there’s room for everyone (women and men) to come to the table and hold healthy discussions centered around workplace diversity, then we are not only showing that growth in equality in the trucking industry is possible, but it also sets an example for the rest of the world to see.
We all hold the potential to play nice together in the same sandbox.