- Research & Conference Papers
Integrating Women as Employees in the Public Transport Sector of Delhi
This report examines the challenges and opportunities for increasing female participation in Delhi's public transport sector, focusing on bus drivers and conductors. It highlights how overcoming barriers can lead to fair remuneration and improved social mobility for women.
Though much has been written about women’s access to public transport, there has been relatively little research done to address barriers to women’s employment in public transport. Organized-labour conferences and the European Union’s Social Dialogue have both conducted cursory investigations and published reports on the experiences of female employees in the public transport sector. Both in terms of statistics and appearances, these studies reveal that the field is still considered to be male-dominated or, put in other terms, a non-traditional occupation for women. As with other non-traditional occupations, women face a litany of barriers to entry that include lack of knowledge regarding opportunities, discriminatory qualifications and hiring practices, and on-the-job harassment. Though these factors pose substantial challenges, integrating women into the public transport sector—and indeed, several other non-traditional occupations—opens up a wide range of opportunities for fair remuneration and government benefits. This is particularly true because sectors that have an overrepresentation of females—predominantly within economics of care—are paid considerably less and have weaker benefits than those that are predominantly male. Though proper valuation of care work must be advocated for, integrating women into non-traditional occupations is also a successful strategy. To this end, addressing constraints and locating opportunities for women in the transport sector could play a hand in facilitating social mobility for women.
This report will assess opportunities and constraints to integrating more women into the Delhi public transport system as employees, with a particular emphasis on urban resource-poor women. Though a myriad of opportunities exist for employment, I will focus on opportunities and constraints related to women’s employment as public bus drivers and conductors within the Delhi Transportation Corporation, a state company that manages bus fleets within the city.
Read “Integrating Women as Employees in the Public Transport Sector of Delhi” Research Report
