Fisher: Promoting diversity in trucking, tire industries

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics' (BLS) most recent data book on women in the labor force, it is a good time to be a female professional in the U.S.

In 2019, 57.4% of women in the U.S. participated in the labor force. This was up from 57.1% in 2018, but 2.6 percentage points below the peak of 60% in 1999. Today women make up about 47% of the overall labor force.

The tire and trucking industries have long been considered male dominated since women make up less than 25% of their workforce totals. According to the BLS, in 2019 only 14% of the tire manufacturing workforce were women, a decline from 17% in 2015. Only 12.8% of the workforce in the trucking industry were women.

While there hasn't been an increase in the female workforce in the tire and trucking industries, I would venture to say there has been a significant improvement in the positions they hold. In the 1970s and 1980s, you could walk into the headquarters of any tire maker or large trucking company and see loads of women filling position as secretaries (a.k.a. administrative assistants), clerks and keypunch operators. Department directors and upper management were all men.

Today, almost no one, with the exception of C-level executives, has a secretary, and keypunch operators are a thing of the past. Instead you see more women in research and development, marketing, sales, finance and as plant managers thanks to the educational opportunities they took advantage of and a concerted effort on the part of these companies to hire women for these positions and diversify their workforces.

The number of female new recruits has been rising. Some tire makers have R&D development training programs that work recent engineering and science graduates through different areas of R&D, production and marketing. Several have established internal networks that provide professional development, mentoring and networking opportunities to their women associates to help them thrive and succeed both personally and professionally. Those initiatives are paying off as companies that have diversity in their leadership tend to be more profitable, according to recent reports.

Tire dealerships are a male-dominated business segment, too. When we look at BLS data for the automotive parts, accessories and tire store sector workforce, women make up just 16.4% of the workforce. Only 1.5% of the heavy vehicle and mobile equipment service technicians are women.

In the trucking industry, women account for only 23% of management positions. You will find more women in sales, marketing, finance and operations, but you will rarely see them in vehicle maintenance. In fact women make up only 1.5% of bus and truck diesel engine mechanics, according to the BLS data.

The shop floor can be a hostile place for women. Managers, technicians, visiting salesmen and other men can give women a helluva time if they want — and they often do. They can make a woman supervisor's life hell unless she learns to become as tough as they are. They can be equally hard on a woman turning a wrench or doing some other traditional, male task.

When you look at truck drivers, only 6.2% are female. Unlike so many other industries today, women truck drivers receive all the same benefits men do and are paid just as much since pay is based on the work. However, being away from home for weeks at a time and having to deal with some degree of chauvinism, gender discrimination and sexual harassment from male driver trainers, drivers and dispatchers discourages a lot of women.

In a survey conducted by The Women in Trucking Association and Sawgrass Logistics, women truckers were asked to rate how safe they felt while on the job on a scale of 1 to 10. The tally came in at a disconcerting 4.4.

Kim Riddle, an assistant professor at Western Kentucky University, conducted a survey of 236 women truck drivers as part of her dissertation. She found that while fewer than half of the respondents (42%) reported they had been sexually harassed while on the job, 92% indicated that they had experienced at least one behavior associated with sexual harassment. (She listed 17 behaviors that constituted sexual harassment.)

Further, 75% of these drivers said they had no idea to whom they should report those incidents when they did occur.

While women entering the tire and trucking industries today are protected by sexual-harassment and sexual-discrimination laws, gender discrimination and sexual harassment can still be found in both industries. As high-profile cases like Harvey Weinstein and Andrew Cuomo have shown us, sexual harassment can occur at the highest levels of management and it can filter all the way down to the production or shop floor. The harasser can be the victim's supervisor or a co-worker. In the case of truck drivers, it could also be truck stop personnel or dock workers.

Sexual harassment can occur in the form of unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical harassment of a sexual nature. Verbal harassment consists of sexual stories, jokes, crude or offensive remarks, unwanted requests for dates, drinks or dinner. Non-verbal harassment includes sexist or sexual material and staring. Physical harassment involves deliberate touching. Sexual harassment is illegal when it becomes so frequent or severe that it creates a hostile or offensive work environment, or when it results in an adverse employment decision, such as someone ends up quitting, being fired or demoted.

The consequences of sexual harassment include lower self-esteem as well as physical and psychological issues which can result in decreased productivity, absenteeism, choosing to be laid off and departure from the industry.

But sexual harassment isn't the only thing that is keeping women from entering the tire and trucking industries. There are several other negative perceptions about the workplace environment that are obstacles.

The first is an unappealing work environment. Not everyone wants to build tires, service tires, service trucks or drive trucks. The environments can be dirty, harsh and even dangerous.

A second roadblock is the perception that there is a lack of work/life balance. This is a big concern for women with families who also require flexibility in work schedules, a condition that is not perceived to be very great in either of these industries.

There also are the perceptions that there is a lack of advancement opportunities for women and that a wage gap exists between women and men working in the trucking and tire industries.

This is really sad since women can make a considerable contribution and improvement to these industries. They do bring certain skills with them that are usually superior to men's.

Women, for instance, are considered by many to be inherently better listeners and can diffuse an ugly situation much more quickly than a man can. They show greater empathy for the customer's problems and provide them with greater assurance that the problem will be handled correctly. It is always better to have someone with good people skills and train them in the technical areas of their job, than to hire a technically oriented person and have to train him or her in good people-handling skills. People skills are much harder to learn.

While women are not readily accepted into the trucking and tire industries, to be equally fair, they are not exactly breaking the doors down to get in either. The work in operations and maintenance in a trucking company is very hard physically, with high pressure, long hours and rough and unattractive work environments. As you know, working in the commercial truck tire business in all kinds of weather is dirty, strenuous, harsh, and really hard on your fingernails!

In fact, I've heard tire dealers say that they would hire women if only women would respond to their job postings. Since they get few, if any, female applicants, they rarely hire any.

Why is this? I think it's because young women coming out of high schools and colleges are not aware of the opportunities that are available in the tire and trucking industries for them. Very few employers want to hire women — or men — right out of high school with no experience in sales or the more technical areas of our businesses. College graduates may have a better chance, but they may pass over tire makers, tire dealers and trucking companies for business opportunities that they perceive to be more "glamorous."

To increase the number of women in the transportation sector, the U.S. Department of Transportation established in 2009 the Women & Girls Transportation Initiative (WITI), which offers an internship program that enables young women from colleges and universities across the country to participate. This program places qualified female college students in transportation-related internships, which helps educate them on career opportunities they otherwise might never have considered.

Further, the current U.S. Senate's $1 trillion infrastructure bill establishes a Women of Trucking Advisory Board to encourage women to enter the trucking industry.

If we in the trucking and/or tire industries want to attract more women to our industries, we are going to have to work at it. That means contacting local high schools and vocational schools and using "Career Day" programs, internship courses and summer employment to make girls aware there are other things they can do that aren't traditional women's jobs.

Your company can create a human-resource policy that encourages the hiring of female high school and/or college students part-time to initiate them into your company and train them in the areas you feel you could take advantage of their innate people skills and attention to detail.

This type of program has several advantages: it helps young women get through school, it provides them with the experience they need to become employable full-time, it provides you with relatively inexpensive labor during the training period, and, by the time these young ladies graduate, you'll know whether they'll make good full-time employees or not.

To be successful, you will need to create a corporate culture that is accepting of women. This cultural change has to start at the top of your company.

Senior management must impress the importance of gender diversity and inclusion as a critical component of your successful business. Weed out the biases that discourage women from joining and staying at your company. Establish a formal or informal mentorship program that pairs women with experienced people who will provide good business advice, advocate for them and help them see a clear path to their career goals. This is probably the most effective tool a company can implement to help pave the way for attracting and retaining women in the industry.

Peggy can be reached via e-mail at [email protected]. Her previous columns are available at tirebusiness.com.