Female truck driver: a journey of gender, work, and identity discussions

Abstract

This study looks at female truck drivers who, besides being truck drivers, choose to work the long routes. The problem of gender identity in the workplace was addressed by analyzing the female truck driver, considering she performs an itinerant activity. Riding along is a constituent part of this ethnographic research, which aims at the researcher’s active participation in the female trucker’s journeys and the participation of the female truck drivers as a voice to be heard over this reality. Identity is seen from the notion of identity, difference and différance in order to see the female truck drivers’ reality connected with their itinerant routine. Gender in the workplace is handled from the legitimation formats of social roles and identities, which are solidified nowadays, especially from the point of view of the feminist critique of sex biology. This critique deconstructs the myth of supposed physical strength advantage. An understanding of non-places was used to address the transience quality of occupation since the results point to the development of a marginal identity. We approach the work through the understanding of hierarchies, the powers, and the sexist division of labor proposed, where motherhood is emphasized as the main obstacle for female truck drivers to continue their occupations. At last, it is pointed out that although women are conquering new workspaces, hierarchical and power relations are reorganized within the institutions, creating new gender relations, but remaining unequal.