Women still make up just 22% percent of the transport workforce, and are more likely to find themselves in precarious or unstable positions. Women transport workers also face shocking violence and harassment from colleagues, managers and customers. That is why trade unions are committed to take measures that improve the situation of women in the transport sector. One way to do this is through high-quality workplace training.
In partnership with the ETF and with support from the associated partners Unite the Union, FNV and CFDT-FGTE, the Federation of Transport Trade Unions of Bulgaria (FTTUB) carried out the EU-funded project “Women in Transport – Education for Valuable Employment (EVE)”. The project ran from 2016 until 2018 and its main objective was to complete the ETF training package on gender equality with a module on violence and harassment against women in transport.
During the course of the project, six project seminars were organised in Sofia (Bulgaria), Amsterdam (the Netherlands), Esher (Great Britain), Paris (France), and two additional in Pravets (Bulgaria). In total, FTTUB trained nearly 90 trade union activists and representatives from 17 European countries (France, UK, Ireland, Spain, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Croatia, Montenegro, Turkey, Romania, Lithuania, Estonia and Bulgaria). They, in turn, will be able to train their fellow colleagues and develop the capacity of trade unions to recognise, react to and prevent violence and harassment against women in the workplace.
The high-level final conference “Improving gender equality in the transport sector” in March 2018 in Pravets, Bulgaria, gathered more than 100 delegates and guests from all over Europe. It had the participation of key Bulgarian ministers and the support and participation of Bulgarian employers in the urban transport sector and academic researchers. Among the official guests were Elisabeth Kotthaus, (European Commission, DG MOVE), Montserrat Mir (ETUC), Brigitta Paas (chair of the ETF Women’s Committee) and Valérie Latron (vice-chair of the ETF Women’s Committee).
This project led to the creation of a new training module on violence and harassment against women, and a comprehensive training kit which unions and workers can use to improve gender equality.
Combined with the materials from the TRANSUNION project, the ETF offers now a comprehensive gender training package on how to combat the challenges faced by women in the transport.