我们来看看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的妇女参与铁路事业。
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，铁路是一个高度结构化的组织，角色、等级和人员都有非常明确的定义。在这个中心是'铁路工人'，周围有一个家庭谁是由铁路支持。除了工资，铁路公司还可能提供家庭、教育、社区、培训和福利。儿子们跟随父亲进入铁路部门，女儿们也常常嫁入其他铁路家庭。
有证据表明，妇女在铁路的早期建设中发挥了作用。Helena Wojtchzak在她的《铁路妇女》一书中指出，在1851年的人口普查中，有3名妇女被列为“铁路工人”，而在19世纪50年代，伊丽莎白·霍尔曼（Elizabeth Holman）假扮男子为大西部铁路公司（Great Western Railway）工作。
一般来说，妇女在铁路上的工作报酬低，地位低，与传统的家务工作有关，她们受雇于清洁工、厨师、洗衣店女服务员、女裁缝和女服务员。
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.
妇女在“男人的工作”中已经证明了她们自己的能力，所以当1939年战争再次来临时，她们获得工作的机会要多得多。妇女现在能够从事铁路运营和基础设施维护工作，包括操作信号和记录列车运行、检查隧道和桥梁、维护信号、加油点和轨道维护。
战争时期妇女铁路工作的经验并不能保证和平时期的光明前途。
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“20乘20”目标, to increase our take-up of female employees across the business to 20 per cent by 2020. OurStrategic Business Plan第6控制期（2019-2024年）规定了我们的计划，即在控制期结束前将我们企业中的女性人数增加50%，并在学徒和毕业生的招聘中实现性别均衡。
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与学校和大学接触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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