2 minute read
Women in Rail
Women in Rail Christine Fernandes
Bridging the gender gap in the UK rail industry
While workplace diversity in the UK rail industry has made great strides since I joined two decades ago, there is still much to be done to improve gender balance. Despite rail’s amazing growth, creating manifold job opportunities, women are still underrepresented within the workforce. The industry struggles to attract women to consider a career in the sector and, consequently, there remains a deficit of talent and diversity of skills.
According to the recently published Williams-Shapps Plan for Rail, just 13 per cent of the workforce is female. Additionally, very few women are in senior decision-making roles. We also know that there are still old-fashioned preconceptions around gendered occupations and that the sector is simply not seen as an exciting career route by girls. However, thanks in a large part to the work of Women in Rail (WR) in the last few years, the rail industry has become aware of these challenges and substantial progress has been made to tackle this perception and redress the gender imbalance.
WR and the Railway Industry Association, for example, launched the Equality, Diversity & Inclusion Charter at the end of last year. Championing EDI in the UK railway industry, more than 170 rail businesses have signed the charter to date, including some large rail companies such as my employer CAF.
And, of course, one of WR’s key objectives is to inspire young people to consider a career in the rail industry and especially girls.
This is one of the underpinning values of the charity I am keen to pursue during my tenure as chair of the Women in Rail Wales Regional Group. Our activities have been severely curtailed by the Covid-19 pandemic but not our enthusiasm and passion to make a difference!
In the next few months, we will be growing our network of likeminded partners, delivering presentations at school, college and university careers fayres and attending STEM events to showcase the breadth of exciting employment opportunities the UK rail industry has to offer.
We will not only be focusing our efforts on those youngsters on the cusp of leaving school and university but, through being more visible within the wider Welsh community, spreading the word to parents that there are great opportunities for their daughters to have career and thrive in the UK rail sector!
By advocating a positive image of the rail industry among girls and young women, sharing success stories and highlighting the important role females have to play in its future, we are actively promoting rail as a career of choice.
And that’s not just in front-line and engineering roles, but also the multitude of other positions available in the sector such as in Operations, IT, Marketing and Media, HR, finance and driving the green agenda.
It is only through inspiring the next generation of women to join the rail sector that we will begin to bridge the immense gender gap.
A diverse workforce will broaden the talent pipeline, inspiring creativity and innovation, which will benefit the entire rail industry.
