It has fallen slightly out of fashion these days, but readers who’ve been paying attention cultural trends these past few years might recall that not so long ago, the phrase “war on women” was in vogue. The basic idea was that dreadful right-wing fellas like me, and likely, people like you, dear reader, were pursuing a set of policies to drive women towards misery and unhappiness and second class citizenship, ranging from being sceptical of legal abortion, to, allegedly, condoning things like wolf whistling.
For all of our alleged villainy, though, those of us who are supposed veterans of this war on women did not once, ever, suggest condemning more women to the absolute misery of life as a long-distance lorry driver. That, though, is the new policy of the Government of Ireland:
Encouraging more women to become lorry drivers and building distribution hubs to reduce truck congestion in cities are among the targets in the Government’s first strategy plan for the road haulage industry.
The 10-year strategy has been developed to improve standards and efficiencies in the highly competitive industry, to move the sector to a greener future and to address lorry driver shortages arising from retirements in an ageing, mostly male workforce.
There are few less family friendly careers one could think of than long-haul lorry driving. You work alone. You spend, in many cases, days and weeks on end on the road. You spend your time, at least outside of Ireland, in Lorry parks that are built and designed around the assumption that almost all of the users of those facilities will be male. You are, in many ports, under threat of people trying to break into your lorry in an attempt to smuggle themselves, or their drugs, across borders. The sanitation facilities are bleak, to use a kind word.
It is one thing to say, as we would all, presumably, agree, that if a woman really wants to become a Lorry driver, then that is, of course, her right.
It is quite another to actively encourage people, especially women, into a job where they are likely to feel unsafe, and under threat.
This is, it strikes me, yet another one of those areas where Government Policy has devolved into a belief system, rather than any pragmatic effort to address problems. Speak to anybody in the road haulage industry, and “gender equality in Lorry Driving” will not be amongst their top 50 concerns. Yet, because Government must nod at the right NGOs in each area of policy, it has somehow become the literal top priority of our policymakers, where the industry is concerned.
Aside from the ideological element, it is also, it strikes me, a complete waste of time and energy: Are there likely to be long queues of women lining up for this job? No more, I would argue, than there are likely to be long queues of men lining up to work as nurses in care homes. One of the things about the gender equality agenda is that it entirely and completely ignores the temperamental and character differences between men and women, or the idea that men and women have different preferences. It is a simple statement of observed reality that women historically have tended to drift more towards the caring professions, like nursing and teaching, and that men have tended to drift more towards the jobs where strength and endurance is more required, like soldiering and logistics and policing.
To listen to modern thought on the matter, one might get the impression that this is all some sexist conspiracy – that we’ve been conditioned into it, over centuries, with women told from the cradle that they can’t be “strong” and men told that they can’t cry, or whatever. The notion that biological and hormonal and instinctive differences between men and women play a role in their respective choices is the closest thing one can get to modern heresy.
At some point, though, one might hope that common sense would break through. Lorry driving, especially long distance lorry driving, is quite simply a job that is likely to have more appeal to young single men than it is to almost any other demographic in society. And that is fine. There is no actual need for every job and every career to be gender balanced, or demographically representative. There is a need for everybody to have opportunities to do what they believe themselves good at, or suited to. And that’s it.