From the Publisher's Desk July / August 2006

From the Publisher's Desk

GUEST EDITORIAL

Women in the Driver´s Seat

In a short article hidden away in the back pages of the Noroeste newspaper last month was the announcement of a milestone for women in Mazatlán. Our local bus company, Alianza de Camiones, for the first time in its history was hiring female bus drivers, six to be exact. The women were to begin a 15 day training session before getting behind the wheel. According to the company, the reason for hiring the ladies was it had lost many of its male drivers to the new Picachos Dam project where, presumably, the pay is substantially better.

And this brought to mind “Rosie the Riveter.” During World War II, with their men away fighting in Europe and Asia, women in the US were actively solicited to fill the void in manufacturing and defense industries as machinists, assembly line workers and welders. Rosie the Riveter became a symbol of (dare I say it?) the liberation of women from centuries of stereotyping and division of labor. Dating from the introduction of women into the workforce during WWII, the lines have indeed moved between what is or is not appropriate employment for either sex.

When the Alianza announced it was to introduce women bus drivers, their male counterparts objected. How would the ladies deal with obstreperous passengers, the long hours, the stress? The answer appears to be “the same way men do.”

Female drivers have been around in the US and Canada since the 1930s when women were first hired to drive school buses. In the 1950s and 60s when my daily commute to school was a half hour bus ride, our driver Shirley was as dependable as a January snowstorm and just as ferocious, keeping 30 rowdy kids in check as she negotiated unplowed roads and black ice. She would have considered a bus load of mostly complacent, paying customers on a sunny Mazatlán morning a piece of cake. I understand Shirley retired after 25 years with all her faculties in place.

According the US Census Bureau, in February 2004 there were 253,000 women drivers in the States working for commercial bus companies. In England, 1211 female drivers. The first female bus driver in Iran was hired in November, 2002, and most of the rural buses in Thailand are driven by women. The six Mazatlecas hired by Alianza are in good company.

When a Mazatlán friend of mine went to the States as a teenager to attend school, his first culture shock was seeing a female bus driver. With that in mind, it will be interesting to see how Mazatlán´s bus passengers react to a woman in the driver´s seat……

Maureen Dietrich

Editor