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FEATUREDINTERVIEW Women in Transport Sonya Byers Chief Executive of Women in Transport This month, with March including International Women’s Day, we’ve interviewed Sonya Byers, Chief Executive of Women in Transport, who are a not-for-profit organisation helping to empower women to maximise their potential. Hi Sonya, what’s your role in Women in Transport? I’m Chief Executive. My background is quite varied; I haven’t had what you would call a linear career. I started off in transport 20 years ago as a traffic survey enumerator, then all sorts since. I first joined Women in Transport as a member about 12 years ago, the board as a volunteer eight years ago and became Chief Executive in 2019. What are the origins of Women in Transport? It started as an EU branch of a larger American organisation called WCS International 15 years ago, based solely in the London area. In 2017 I became vice president and my friend Katie Hulland became President; we decided to propose to the board to make us an independent UK organisation and better serve our UK members. At the time we were solely based in London with 120 members. Now we have around 6000 members, with soon to have four regional hubs spread across the country. In the same time our social media users has grown from 3000 to 15000. 26,27 Women in Transport.indd 1 11/03/2021 15:55
I’ve always believed that there’s a job for everyone in transport. There’s no reason that a women can’t do a job that traditionally a man has done. FEATUREDINTERVIEW That is a large expansion in that time, where has it come from? The first factor was expanding the operation outside of London, this immediately opened up new avenues for us. We focused our efforts on exploring gaps in the market, and looking for collaborations. Transport is such a big area and contains many groups; we looked at where there were gaps, possibly forming partnerships with other groups so we made better use of our resources or sometimes helping to start smaller groups ourselves where nothing existed. Have you had much help from any bigger organisations? Gender equality is a massive issue; anything that a bigger company can do around a larger agenda is going to make a difference. If people can see the larger organisations and employers investing in it then this proves it makes commercial sense. There were a few movements in particular that had a big impact on how important and high up on the agenda gender equality is for UK business as a whole. Me Too had an impact by raising the profile that women needed a voice and that some behaviours are unacceptable. Caroline Criado Perez and her work and book about invisible women; identifying the gender data gap and the importance that women were involved with decision making. I have a real concern that general pay gap reporting is on hold at the moment due to Covid. I saw a lot of change come from the fact that companies had to look at their data and publicly said these are our facts and this is what we’re going to do about it. then they don’t necessarily see it as a women’s job, that’s a challenge across the whole of transport, so there’s a job to do around perception. With the changes happening in 2030, that makes training and development event more of an issue? I’ve always believed that there’s a job for everyone in transport. There’s no reason that a women can’t do a job that traditionally a man has done. I do appreciate that some people have objections or concerns around some areas like lifting or more manual aspects of labour, but the things you would put in place for women to do these roles why wouldn’t you put the same things in place to safeguard the wellbeing of a man? The reasonable adjustments you would have to make for women in terms of tools, equipment and working practice, would probably benefit other men too. Going forward, taking only males as our candidate pool will mean we’re only training half the population, then we’re only accessing half of the talent; we’re losing out. What’s your next step? It’s building on our current foundations. Building resilience into our network has been a focus for us. Like everyone, we had to react quickly to the pandemic; we went from being an all physical event programme to virtual. In the year leading up to the lockdown we did 33 events, converting that to virtual with two members of full time staff was a challenge. What is has allowed us to do was to plan going forward. We want to build our volunteer support network, reaching out to our members and getting them to be more involved with our events programme. We have our AGM in May and there are new board roles that need to be filled. We want to strengthen the relationships we have with other organisation and look to build more. Our mission is to support the professional development of women working in the transport industry; we have an advanced mentoring programme that has been running for four years. We’re now looking at a leadership programme; targeting senior women looking to progress. There may also be more regional hubs later this year. We grow organically, so if there is interest in a particular area then we’ll go for a regional activation. What are your thoughts on the garage industry? There’s definitely a drive in the automotive industry to get more women progressing through. The challenge is unless you see women involved in every level of an organisation ANNUAL MEMBERSHIP Annual membership of Women in Transport is £60 per year providing access to monthly events, our annual mentoring programme, the All Party Parliamentary Group for Women in Transport and partner discounts. Sign up online at: www.womenintransport.com/membership THE GARAGE MAGAZINE 27 26,27 Women in Transport.indd 2 11/03/2021 15:55
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The Garage 325

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