Opinion: Increasing Profits, One Woman at a Time

By Ellen Voie

CEO

Women In Trucking Association

This Opinion piece appears in the June 24 print edition of Transport Topics. Click here to subscribe today.

At a recent White House forum, we were asked for our “insights on best practices for educating, recruiting, retaining and developing leadership among a diverse cadre of women throughout the U.S. transportation sector and to evolve strategies for overcoming barriers.”

U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood addressed the participants and emphasized his support for increasing opportunities for women working in transportation careers.

He noted that while there are few women who lead companies in modes such as rail, air and maritime, the exception, albeit small, was the presence of female leaders in the truck and bus industries.

The trucking industry, for example, has seen the advancement of women at private carriers and publicly held companies, while other women have attained positions of leadership in trucking associations — including American Trucking Associations’ first female chairman, Barbara Windsor, in 2010. Many state trucking associations also are promoting women to the top director position.

However, a glance around any trucking industry event continues to reveal more men than women in the room.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics has reported that the percentage of women employed in management positions in transportation, storage and distribution was slightly over 14% in 2011.

“After all — regardless of gender — everyone uses our transportation systems,” LaHood said in his Fast Lane blog. “And those systems will serve us more effectively when they’re planned, designed, engineered and built by professionals who represent all of us.”

The DOT’s goal aligns with Women In Trucking Association’s mission to encourage women to consider careers in the trucking industry and to address challenges women might face in the process. The group’s board of directors noted that the inclusion of women in leadership roles brings untapped potential to a carrier’s management team.

Gender is a business issue, not a “women’s issue,” claims Avivah Wittenberg-Cox in her book, “Why Women Mean Business.” She correlates CEO commitment to diversity as the top measure and relates receiving this admonishment when researching her book: “Women may hold the keys [to gender balance], but men generally still control the locks.”

It may take a while for women in transportation careers to reach higher levels in management, as the statistics bureau (2011) reports women still attain only 11% of the degrees in transportation.

However, if LaHood’s quest to increase the number of women in transportation careers is realized, the result could be a very different environment — and one with a healthier bottom line. Increasing evidence suggests that gender diversity in the workforce is synonymous with better performance.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce formed the Center for Women in Business in 2012 to understand better how women in leadership roles affect a company’s financial performance. A research initiative conducted by McKinsey & Co. identified the 78 best-performing companies from Fortune’s 1,000 that met the criteria for gender diversity, which was defined by predetermined levels of women in executive roles and in board seats.

Not only did these companies outperform the rest of the Fortune 1000, they surpassed them by 64% when women were present on top leadership teams and by almost 80% when board representation was above average.

Pepperdine University professor Roy Adler also found a correlation between high-level female executives and business success when tracking Fortune 500 companies with strong records of promoting women to the executive suite. They found these companies outperformed the industry average on profitability measured over a four-year research period.

Adler attributes the success rates to the ability of the executives to make smart decisions. “One of the smart decisions those executives have consistently made,” Adler claims, “is to include women in the executive suite — so that, regardless of gender, the best brains are available to continue making smart, and profitable, decisions.”

Warren Buffett, in a recent interview with Fortune magazine, said, “Fellow males, get onboard. The closer that America comes to fully employing the talents of all its citizens, the greater its output of goods and services will be. We’ve seen what can be accomplished when we use 50% of our human capacity.”

Buffett’s advice to leaders encourages gender diversity in the transportation industry, which is a top priority for LaHood as well as the Women In Trucking Association board of directors. Including every potential “brain,” regardless of the owner’s gender, should be your company’s objective as well.

Plover, Wis.-based Women In Trucking Association’s mission is to encourage and facilitate women’s employment in the trucking industry. Membership isn’t limited to women — 16% of the group’s membership are male.