Women in Railway Careers

[whole diary]

[ellendune]

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.

[grahame]

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

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 ...

[Cynthia]

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.   

[Brucey]

I stumbled across this article in The Telegraph today.

Thomas the Tank Engine needs more female trains, Labour MP^▸ (Member of Parliament) says

Mary Creagh, Labour's shadow transport secretary, says Thomas the Tank Engine needs more female engines to encourage girls to be train drivers

Continues

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.

[4064ReadingAbbey]

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^» (Network Rail - home page) 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^» (Office of Rail and Road formerly Office of Rail Regulation - about).

[Chris from Nailsea]

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 

[Cynthia]

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^▸ (National Union of Rail, Maritime & Transport Workers) 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.

[grahame]

Is it known how long these women have been in these posts? Is it a 21st century phenomenon? 

There have been women prior ... at First Great Western we had Alison Forster (joined FGW^▸ (First Great Western) 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

[Cynthia]

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

[SandTEngineer]

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

[thetrout]

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

[Cynthia]

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

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

[grahame]

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.

[thetrout]

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

[Cynthia]

'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?