“In the past few weeks, we have seen the impact of a shortage of heavy goods vehicle drivers. The crisis originally affected our food supplies and in the past few days we’ve seen the same issue with petrol, causing turmoil across the country.

The problem is a simple one, we don’t have enough drivers to transport our goods. To tackle this issue, we need to attract more workers into the haulage industry.

While the measures recently announced by Government are welcome, a solution that isn’t being talked about is attracting more women into the freight industry to fill the current shortage. The latest figures from Logistics UK show that less than 1% of HGV drivers are women. This makes it one of the most male dominated professions in existence.

There are a huge number of potential drivers waiting to fill our lorries but aren’t doing so because of the transport industry’s image problem. This was an issue which came up in our research on gender perceptions and experiences working in transport, published earlier this year. While the barriers that are stopping women entering the profession require further investigation, it is clear that if recruitment efforts are focused on only half of the population, the chances of successfully finding drivers to transport our essential goods are greatly reduced.”

Jo Field, President Women in Transport

Click here to read more on our research on gender perceptions and experiences working in transport, published earlier this year.