To Örebro University

This paper focuses gender and gender equality in contemporary and future haulage business, arguing for a need for norm-critical approaches to build more gender equal transport futures. Currently, there is a general demand for more drivers internationally and in Sweden. Following the current driver shortage in occupational road freight, transport companies in Europe and Sweden recognise the need to recruit more women chauffeurs. Part of the problem is how transport is gendered, strongly intertwined with masculine norms that prevents nonnormative bodies to identify themselves as drivers. In Sweden, a country with a world reputation as champions in gender equality, men still make up more than 90 % of the work force in the Swedish transport business. While recruiting more women would contribute to solve the urgent problem of driver shortage, women drivers typically face gendered problems, concerning their personal safety, harassments, hygiene, and work/life (im)balance. From the perspective of the haulage business, addressing these gendered problems can increase the ability hire more women drivers, but would also need to develop transport innovations that suit not only today’s male users but also those of tomorrow.

Future road freight and transport innovations such as more autonomous vehicles are often imagined to ‘solve’ some of the current problems that transport companies struggle with, including driver shortage. With the advent of autonomous, electrified and connected mobilities, we may anticipate both a gendered re-segregation and that fewer drivers would be needed (Balkmar and Mellström 2018). Nevertheless, problems of road transportation and the lack of gender equality in the haulage business can’t be solved following the “old logics of a technological fix”, gendered social and cultural issues need to be part of the solution (Kröger and Weber, 2018). Against this background, the aim of this paper is to explore how normcritical perspectives can offer ways forward with regards to gender and (lack of) gender equality in the haulage business. This includes to consider how technological innovations may change what it entails to be a truck driver and open new opportunities for the profession with regards to gender equality.