我们看一下妇女在铁路行业的故事以及今天我们如何鼓励和支持更多女性作为职业进入铁路。
A brief look at the titles of books and articles relating to people working on the railway shows that almost all refer to ‘railwaymen’. It is quite difficult to find much reference to the vital role that women have played over the years.
传统上，铁路一直是一个高度结构化的组织，其中角色，成绩和人员已经非常界定。在这的中心是“铁路”，被一个由铁路支持的家庭包围。除了工资，铁路公司也可能提供了家庭，教育，社区，培训和福利。儿子跟随他们的父亲进入铁路服务，女儿经常嫁给其他铁路家庭。
有证据表明女性在早期建设的铁路上发挥了作用。Helena Wojtczak在她的书中的“铁路女性”表明，在1851年的人口普查中，有3名妇女被列为“铁路劳动者”，并且在1850年代的伊丽莎白霍尔曼通过假装成为一个男人，伊丽莎白霍尔曼为伟大的西方铁路工作。
通常，妇女在铁路上的工作是低薪，低地位，与传统的家务角色相关联，作为清洁工，厨师，洗衣店，裁缝和女士候诊室的服务员。
Where women were involved in operations, this centred on level crossing gatekeeping. Women often looked after the gates if their husbands or fathers were involved in other railway work. This was a great responsibility for the safety of both railway workers and passengers but women working in this area were often not paid, the gate coming as it did with lodgings. Women were sometimes taken on as gatekeepers and occasionally as station mistresses in their own right if they were widowed or orphaned.
Only at the end of the 19th century were women employed in increasing numbers in administrative work and telecommunications.
20世纪的两次世界大战改变了妇女在铁路上的就业机会。
As railwaymen went to fight or operate railways abroad, the railway companies had to re-evaluate the contribution women could make. In the First World War women were restricted in the type of work they were allowed to do and were generally employed as porters, locomotive cleaners and train guards.
女性在“男人的工作”中得到了不仅仅是证明自己，所以当战争再次在1939年再来时，向他们工作的机会远远大。妇女现在能够在铁路运营和基础设施维护中工作，包括操作信号和录制列车运动，检查隧道和桥梁，维护信号，加油点和跟踪维护。
在战争期间，女性铁路工作的经验并未在平时期间确保光明的未来。
However the experience of women’s railway work during the war did not secure a bright future in peacetime. Although in theory there was no bar to women doing certain jobs, in practice women were not retained or recruited into operating, maintenance and engineering roles.
In the decades after the Second World War the struggle for equality in opportunity and pay gained increasing popularity. Through the 1960s and 1970s equal pay and sex discrimination legislation made it possible for women to be employed in any railway role on the same terms as their male counterparts and there were a number of ‘high profile’ women such as Karen Harrison who in 1978 became the first woman train driver’s assistant on British Railways. Yet even with equality in terms of the law women working on the railway were often isolated and faced opposition from colleagues.
Today it is recognised that a strong and safe workforce is a diverse workforce.
In 2018 16 per cent of Network Rail’s 38,000 workforce were women and we work hard to engage more women to enter the railway industry. ‘Everyone’, ourdiversity and inclusion strategy, commits us to supporting women in the workplace. We have introduced a flexible working policy, which has helped overcome a significant barrier for women in the workplace, and Inspire, our employee network for gender equality, supports women in Network Rail to fulfil their potential.
2017年我们宣布了我们的'20到20'目标, to increase our take-up of female employees across the business to 20 per cent by 2020. OurStrategic Business Plan对于控制期6（2019-2024）列出了我们计划在控制期结束时将业务人数增加50％，并在学徒和毕业生的性别均衡招募。
This is being achieved through investing in recruitment training, creating a more inclusive workplace culture and supporting development and progression of women through the business. We are also与学校和学院一起参与to encourage young people – girls and young women in particular – to choose science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) as worthwhile subjects at school and in higher education. By doing this we are inspiring future generations to get involved in the railway and engineering as a career in order to develop, maintain and operate our railway for decades to come.
Find out more
Gender diversity on the agenda for Network Rail chief executive
Inspire: Network Rail’s gender equality network
Inspirational women at Network Rail
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