Rosie, Take the Wheel: Examining EEOC Actions and Gender Diversity in Frontline Logistics Occupations

Research studying the effect of lawsuits on corporate gender diversity suggests that legal actions increase the number of women employed by affected firms. However, this has only been studied in professional settings, where the percentage of women in the workforce has significantly increased in recent decades. In frontline occupations, women continue to be vastly underrepresented. We examined whether legal actions against firms that employ truck drivers increase their representation of women drivers. We created a database of legal actions taken by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) against firms that employ truck drivers and matched these with gender composition data of trucking firms. Using a difference‐in‐differences framework, we find that EEOC actions have little to no effect on the percentage of women truck drivers. While firm size is positively associated with EEOC actions, the effect is small and insignificant, a finding that holds up to robustness tests. A post hoc analysis reveals that firms in our data employing a greater number of female drivers are much more likely to be subjected to these lawsuits. Our findings indicate that lawsuits effective in increasing corporate gender diversity do not similarly impact diversity in frontline roles.