A Driver is a profession that involves carrying out various transport and delivery activities.

Long
hours, fragmented sleep, noise and vibration, and heavy lifting are but a few work requirements
influencing the health of long haul truckers. Irregular work schedules and the high mobility of
the job may create formidable barriers to health care access. While health related issues of male
drivers have been examined, no comparative examination for female drivers has been conducted.
In this article we are going to learn about the women truck drivers. But female truck driver it is
really an amazing fact, isn’t it. Yes.

There are too much field where women engage themselves in India as well as world. Women
new to the trucking world, particularly younger ones. So in this article we will learn about the
comparison between female truck drivers in India and world. It is said that truck driving is a
tough occupation, with long, unearthly hours and stressful working conditions. The profession
has very few female truck drivers, but remains a largely male dominated one.

Statistics suggest that there aren’t enough female truck drivers on the road.  According to
USA Today, “Women made up 6.2 percent of all truck drivers as of 2017.” Although it is said
the number of female truck drivers is on the rise, there is still a clear gender gap that
desperately needs filling. Although the statistics are shameful, there is still some light to be
found in this overly male-dominated industry, with CNBC’s report about female truck drivers,
stating, “Women and men are paid the same as drivers,” Voie says. “A carrier sets the pay
based on mileage, hours or percentage of the load.

For example, supply chain software company Carton Cloud is an advocate for women working
in the logistics tech space, urging all of their female workers to attend the recent Girls in Tech
Catalyst Conference, to ensure that their female employees are noticed and supported in the
overwhelmingly male-dominated sector. On the other hand, some businesses and organisations
are not as welcoming to the idea of 'gender equality,' with many women facing abuse,
intimidation and a significant lack of awareness or support from the industry.

In India Sati, Sabitri, Durga, Laxmi are worshipped by people treating them as goddesses where
as there is increasing number of violence against women. The amount of violence against women
has increased by many fold due to the greater exposure of women in every field of life. Women
were previously restricted to the four walls of the houses and after globalization they have got
the chances and opportunities to stand equally in all sectors at par with male. Women are now a
days cab drivers and they are also the CEO of top companies. Every day we see women
shattering gender norms, given the patriarchal system under which India still exists. Women are
changing the 'do's and don'ts' our culture has developed.
In India there is lot of women truck driver present. But why they come into this profession?
What’s their educational background? Everything we will discuss with some examples.

Yogita Raghuvanshi is the 1st woman truck driver in the country of 1.3 billion population. she is
probably the most qualified truck driver in the country. Yogita is an inspiration to hundreds and
thousands of Indian women. From Bhopal to a godown of Kerala State Beverages Corporation,
she had pushed a liquor consignment all the way. According to The Hindu, Yogita is far from the
archetypal inter-State trucker. She also happens to be a professional lawyer who chose to provide
for her family in the difficult and dangerous life on the highways, instead of the pittance she
would have received in the black robe as a novice. Since 2000 she and her big truck have criss-
crossed the country over all kinds of terrain.

Yogita grew up with four siblings in Nandurbar, Maharashtra, receiving degrees in Commerce
and Law. Her days and nights on the highways behind the wheel were the result of an unhappy
arranged marriage in 1991—she was married to a Bhopal man who pretended to be a lawyer.
Yogita’s husband died in a road accident 16 years ago. It was after his death that she decided to
work as a truck driver to look after her kids. “If I had opted to be a junior to some lawyer and
enter the legal profession, I would have got only a pittance for the many initial years. But I learnt
that driving trucks meant instant wages,” said Yogita.

It's no easy job to be a woman driver on highway. Yogita has often spoken about getting threats,
being assaulted on the highway by three people, where she had to fight them off, and finding it
difficult to bear perishable things and drive through the night. When she feels tired she will rest
for a short nap at a roadside gas station.

“I certainly am not doing this job because of a resolve to break stereotypes. I am behind this
wheel owing to my circumstances. So please don’t make out as if I am from another world,” she
said.
Now change the face to world. Brown is a cross-country big-rig driver, a veteran in an
environment that is steadily hoping to recruit more women at a time when the industry is facing a
steep shortage of jobs as it seeks to keep up with America's growing demand for products, from
steaks to large-screen TVs. At the end of 2018, the American Trucking Associations reported a
shortage of about 60,000 drivers, leading trucking companies to search for new pools of
candidates, be they veterans, refugees or women.

Brown, who owns her tractor-truck, is taking her own precautions as regards health. She tries to
park in the front line of trucks when she spends the night at a stand, not the last. She's not going
through trailers where it can't be easily seen. And she tries to park in such a way as to allow her a
straight line to walk to a truck stop.

She said she was lucky, receiving some counseling from other drivers about how to be safe when
she started driving more than three decades ago. Some of her rules are hard and fast: "You can be
friendly, but don't invite someone in the cab of your truck and don't get in theirs."

More women are joining her on the battlefield that is life on the open road. Women made up
6.2 percent of all truck drivers as of 2017, up from 4.9 percent in 2008, the ATA reports. A
survey conducted by Women in Trucking found that they were asked to rate how secure
they felt on the job on a scale of one to ten, women truck drivers answering on average 4.4.
The organization said Truck Stops were advised to add better lighting, more security and
fencing.

But still after all of this why women are least interested to this profession? The answer is
women are still treated inferior to Men. And they mostly thought they are. So Driving is on
least priority list. Fear induced by community. Trucking can be dirty, difficult work. No
support for family to learn even if they have vehicle at home. While driving around
customers, male drivers would stare at them, some in disbelief and some mockingly. Here
comes the safety issue. Everyone talk about the gender equality. Is this equality? No and we
together have to change all of this.