Proceedings of The 5th Global Conference on Women’s Studies
Year: 2023
DOI:
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Gender Equality Culture Measuring Attitudes towards Gender Equality in the Transport Sector
Christina Stave and Lena Levin
ABSTRACT:
The transport industry is dominated by men. In Sweden only 13 percent are women in the transport occupations and globally woman working on board ships are only a few percent.
Calculating the distribution of gender, wages and positions and setting goals is not enough to change this imbalance; we need to study attitudes and norms, which can be termed “gender equality culture.” These qualitative parts of gender equality put focus on men’s and women’s life conditions, values and ideals that affect their opportunities to exert influence in the workplace and in society to influence developments in research and industry and bring forward and illuminate aspects that would otherwise be overlooked.
From a literature review, indicators were identified to develop a survey tool for measuring and evaluating gender equality culture. This survey has been tested in the maritime sector by 564 employees (40% response rate) in a maritime organization. The results showed an overall high equality culture but indicated weak areas. Significant differences were found where men believed to a greater extent than women that the workplace was sufficiently equal and that no one was excluded because of gender. Women had better knowledge of goals and strategy for gender equality and they answered more often that gender equality was important in the workplace.
The results showed a potential to identify strengths and weaknesses as a basis for activities and learning. The questionnaire will be made available for similar studies if this abstract is accepted for a full paper publication.
keywords: attitudes, culture, equality, gender, survey