Women drivers Although 30% of the driver and fare collector jobs are occupied by women, they are still targets of prejudice for working in the transportation system
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here are 22 stops between Pinheirinho bus station and Palmeira, which is in the region of Umbará. In about 20 minutes, you can pass by Angelo Rigolino, João Amadeu Pedro Bom, Faustino Raimundo Pellanda, Nicola Pellanda, Carlópolis, La Salle, Izaac Ferreira da Cruz, Emanoel Voluz, Winston Churchill and Léon Nícolas streets. This is the route that Anna Dal Nagro takes every day, as a driver for the Palmeira route of the public transportation in Curitiba. She started in this career by influence of her father, a driver for the school transportation system, who always took Anna on the commute to school. When she grew up, she worked as a truck driver. However, as she wished, soon enough she changed the truck wheels for the bus wheels. Since urban transportation requires a minimum of two years of experience for admission, her first steps were in a private service, working with companies’ transportation. As she gained experience, Anna took the next steps to join the public transportation system, passing the bureaucratic and practical tests. In fact, on the test she was approved, six men joined her on the enterprise. She and another colleague were the only ones to actually make it. The driver tells us that her routine at work has been gratifying, since she started making friends as time passed. These friends “always bring gifts and souvenirs, some of them give chocolate, every week they bring something”. To her, the good treatment is a sign of the passengers’ satisfaction with the work done by them
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and also the affection for the so called “busão das mulheres” (the women’s bus; ‘busão’ is a slang term that means bus). Anna works with another woman as a fare collector). Satisfied with her work routine, Anna stills mentions that she has rarely heard prejudiced comments and says that she tries not to give relevance to those opinions. According to her “the only thing that might be improved at work is safety”. Luckily, she has never been a victim of muggings, but many of her colleagues have been through this kind of situation. Anna is also a driver engaged in bringing more women to work in the area. According to her, some women friends need an incentive to create the courage to go after the license and pass the tests. Vanusa Pereira Coelho, the women representative in the Sindicato dos Motoristas e Cobradores de Ônibus de Curitiba e Região Metropolitana (SINDIMOC - Bus Drivers and Fare Collectors in Curitiba and Metropolitan Region Union), says that currently around 30% of the positions in those categories are held by women. She believes that women, especially in current days, are prepared to work in any job, although there are still some positions with no female workers, which is the case of traffic controllers. “Companies usually did not hire women, and although today that is different, women are still the minority. Unfortunately, men still have a lot of prejudice towards women, especially if the woman is a driver. For that reason, women that work
Anelise Wickert Gabriel Domingos Mariane Pereira Tradução: Arthur Rodrigo Maneira Clóvis Alberto de Conti Neto
