Remember the slogan, “You’ve come a long way, baby!”? Well, women have, and that includes behind the wheel, as more women are taking up truck driving as a career. Truck driving is an equal opportunity profession, just like any other, but it is still made up of an overwhelming majority of men, and ladies are still having to iron out a few challenges in their path in order to be treated on par.

According to Ellie Voie, President of Women in Trucking, anywhere from three to ten percent of the trucking driving workforce is female. Women in Trucking as an organization works to level the playing field for a growing number of women drivers, including in the areas of “restroom parity at loading docks, to ergonomically designed cabs in the trucks,” as well as other old modes of navigating and performing the job that need to be considerate of women on the job. Safety and security, as always, are also top concerns. But they are for men as well. Income equality in the trucking industry doesn’t appear to be as big of an issue for women, interestingly. Voie says truckers are paid based a company's fee structure, whether you are male or female, so the ability to earn based on fairness is there.

The kind of parity women truckers want most, perhaps, is respect. Is it archaic to even note the strides women have made in the general workforce today? That argument can be made, but for a predominantly male industry such as trucking, highlighting the contributions of women and their abilities to perform the job as well as their male counterparts is something we still need to recognize, and will go a long way to diminish any remaining inequalities facing lady truckers.