Remarks as Prepared for Delivery by Director Jennifer Klein at the ITS America Gender Equity in Transport Workshop: Gender Equity in Transport

Hello everyone – thank you so much to ITS America for inviting me to join this important conversation and for bringing together this great array of leaders and experts.

I’m Jennifer Klein and I’m the Director of the White House Gender Policy Council.

I’m grateful for the opportunity to speak to you today about how we can advance gender equity in transportation. We have a tremendous opportunity to drive meaningful change through the work you all do each and every day.

Before I dive in, I want to take a moment to share the Gender Policy Council’s approach to every issue we work on.

As laid out in the first-ever National Strategy on Gender Equity and Equality, we approach our work across the Federal government according to three guiding principles:

First, we take a whole-of-government approach, which marshals the capacity of every federal agency and department to achieve our goals. Advancing gender equity and equality cannot be the work of one office alone.

Instead, we help lead these efforts across the Federal government, in partnership with our leadership and staff throughout various agencies, including the Department of Labor, the Department of Transportation, the Commerce Department, the Department of Energy, and many others.

Second, we recognize that our priorities are interconnected. Women’s ability to enter, remain, and progress in the workforce is connected to ensuring their workplaces and communities are free from gender-based harassment and violence. Their ability to lead across sectors is dependent on their access to essential services, including quality, affordable health care.

And third, we adopt an intersectional approach, ensuring we consider different identities and experiences – and the impact of discrimination and barriers – as we craft and implement policy. This includes challenges faced by those who experience compounding forms of discrimination and bias related to gender, race, sexual orientation and gender identity, disability, socioeconomic status and other factors.

I’ve taken the time to lay out these three pillars of our approach because they are essential to guiding our efforts, including our work to advance gender equity and transportation.

Turning now to the key issues we’re discussing today, I want to start by addressing the major opportunities to advance gender equity in the transportation workforce – opportunities we have yet to fully maximize.

Here at the Gender Policy Council, we are laser-focused on ensuring women are treated fairly in the economy and in the workplace – including through our efforts to implement the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.

President Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law presents a once-in-a-generation opportunity to transform the landscape of inequality in America. Delivering this law to its maximum potential requires that we take rigorous steps to embed equity and justice into all aspects of implementation.

This work includes taking steps to promote equitable access to the good-paying jobs that the law is creating, especially in sectors where women have historically been under-represented. Despite the fact that good jobs are being created every day in the transportation industry, women still comprise just 15 percent of this critical workforce.

This is not unusual: women are routinely shut out of good jobs in high-paying industries, such as science and technology and transportation. Last March, on Equal Pay Day, the Department of Labor issued a report analyzing the impact that women’s concentration in low-wage sectors – and their relative underrepresentation in many good-paying occupations – has on their overall economic security and gender and racial wage gaps – what we call occupational segregation. The report finds that, in 2019, Black women lost $39.3 billion and Hispanic women lost $46.7 billion in wages compared to white men due to differences in industry and occupation.

With the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, we have a tremendous opportunity to tackle occupational segregation.

To that end, the Department of Transportation and the Department of Labor have signed a memorandum of understanding to promote the creation of good infrastructure and transportation jobs with a focus on equitable workforce development using funding from the law.

Ensuring women have access to good jobs and the training needed to succeed in them goes hand in hand with supporting women’s leadership.

As with many male-dominated sectors, women are under-represented in leadership positions across the transportation industry. In order to achieve meaningful and lasting change, women must be at the tables where decisions are made. To that end, policies that promote not just their recruitment but also their retention and promotion are critical to building a strong foundation that can then support diverse leadership across the sector.

I’m grateful to be talking to many such leaders today – and thankful as well for the partnership and support of so many others who are committed to creating opportunities for those who have been under-represented for too long.

I’m also mindful that the strength and diversity of an industry’s leadership helps drive equitable outcomes across the field.

Many of you are focused on making transportation systems themselves – especially public transit – more equitable and more responsive to the needs of communities, especially those who are more vulnerable and whose needs are too often overlooked.

We have work to do to make public transit more accessible to those with disabilities and others with unique needs – which includes pregnant women and families with strollers.

We are also focused on promoting technical adjustments to make public transit spaces safer and other preventive actions to reduce the incidence of gender-based violence on public transportation.

And we support research and design solutions to address disparities in road safety. As you know, women are at a higher risk for injury or death due to vehicle accidents, in part due to crash test dummies, seat belts, and other safety features that are not designed with women’s body types in mind.

We have room to grow in making our transportation systems safer, more accessible and able to better meet the needs of those we serve, and I thank those who do this important work every day.

Taking action to support women working in the transportation industry, as well as all those who utilize transportation systems every day, has major implications for a broader suite of priorities, including:

Advancing women’s economic security;

Supporting access to health care and education; and

Promoting women’s leadership.

To support these priorities, the transportation sector must continually adapt to respond to the needs of those it serves, centering those who are members of underserved communities, including women and girls of color.

Public transit routes impact whether women can access and hold down a job – with particular importance for the disproportionate number who assume the lion’s share of caregiving responsibilities. Equitable access to transportation also impacts access to education, and the lack of affordable transportation can create barriers in the way of achieving a quality education.

In short, the topic we’re discussing today is critical to a number of the key strategic priorities we’re focused on.

There’s a role for everyone in meeting these objectives – that includes the private sector’s role in committing to work-family policies that support their workers, including by supporting access to affordable child care and adopting flexible scheduling practices and fair pay policies. It also includes the federal government’s commitment to serving as a model employer, including by promoting diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility in the federal workforce. And it includes our state and local partners, who are on the frontlines of providing critical services for communities across the country and advancing equity and equal opportunity as they do so.

Sharing ideas and best practices, as we are today, is part of fostering this collaboration and integral to working towards better workplaces and better futures. If we are going to continue to grow our economy and to be competitive and lead the world in the 21st century, we simply cannot afford to leave half of the workforce behind. Thank you all for your ongoing efforts; we’re grateful for your partnership and leadership.