Work-Life Balance and Women in the Transport Sector: The Indian Context

Indian transport sector considered to be male dominated, presenting numerous challenges for females. Societal expectation, lack of infrastructure and workplace cultures are some of the challenges faced by the women employees. There is also a prenotion for women that India society considered them as caregivers for children and elderly people at home which creates work life balance challenges. This patriarchal mindset exacerbates the difficulties for females in male dominating industries like transport, which ultimately leads to stress, and role conflict. The condition in the transport industry in terms of poor infrastructure, absence of flexible working hours and lack of creche facilities, no provision for family friendly policies further hamper the negatively affect and ability of women employees to manage their career and home at the same time. Above all, gender bias also a contributing factor where a women face “second shift” of unpaid domestic work and services, these all making it difficult for the women to thrive in their career and professional lives. However, through this chapter, we not only exploring the challenges and difficulties faced by women employees in Indian transport sector but also shed some light on the efforts put by some of the renowned organizations who are working in transport sector, in terms of family friendly policies and many more. This chapter also talks about some organization like Mahindra Logistics’ Swayam program like women on wheels and Ashok Leyland’s initiative on flexible work hours. In the last section of the chapter, the case study of successful female professionals such as Sureka Yadav, India’s first female train driver and Luxmi Jadhav, Mumbai first BEST bus driver, highlights how strong family support, resilience and workplace initiatives have helped them in maintaining a healthy work-life balance, which supports women in transportation industry to thrive in their respective professions.