🧩 The Challenge
Accelerating women's integration in the transport sector in Georgia—both in terms of numerical job participation and in pivotal technical and decision-making roles—continues to represent an elusive task. If achieved, however, it could help women step up to the urgent challenge of becoming active participants of the ever more skilled and science- and technology-enabled workforce of the future.
Georgian Railway JSC, which employs around 12,000 people, of which 17% are women1, faces significant challenges in attracting women to technical and engineering positions, jobs that are often perceived as unsuitable for women. At Georgia’s Railway Transportation College, a vocational education center created by the company to train cohorts of company workers with a streamlined theoretical and practical approach, only 32 women were enrolled, compared to 298 men in 2020. Georgia’s labor market is highly segregated as per typically male and female roles so even though Georgian Railway has a non-discrimination policy and career development tools available to all staff, it continues to confront difficulties attracting female employees to a sector widely seen as out of bounds for women.
🛠️ The Intervention
A Gender Action Plan was designed for the Georgian Railway Green Bond project under Asian Development Bank’s investment to help women access jobs in transport. In that scope, the company created 350 jobs during the project’s construction phase, out of which 41 positions were taken up by women, an improvement from the 2020 baseline of 31 out of 323 jobs. The project also aimed to increase the number of women in internships to at least 15%, from the 2019 baseline of 11%. Surpassing the intended goal, by the end of 2023, women held 22% of the internships.
Addressing sexual harassment in the workplace is another priority set out in the project. The company adopted a comprehensive policy to counter sexual harassment, supported by easy-to-use reporting tools, investigations, and transparent redress systems. In addition, to help change attitudes in the workplace, nearly 100% of Georgian Railways staff and contractors attended awareness-raising meetings on zero tolerance policies for gender-based violence and non-discriminatory, in addition to learning about female-friendly workplace rules and provisions.
Women transport users are another a focus of the Georgian Railway Green Bond project, which is promoting safety and equality on its system. To make women and girls feel safe on public transport, the Green Bond project installed notice boards in railway passenger stations providing information on hotlines and helplines for reporting violence and harassment and seeking help.
🏗️ Implementation Challenges and Successes
Georgian Railway took the above-mentioned actions and introduced the new policies. Meeting new staffing targets proved, however, more challenging, due to systemic barriers for women seeking jobs in the railway transportation sector. Entrenched barriers hampering women’s participation in the sector include gender norms that discourage women from applying for jobs in a male-dominated professional field, women’s mobility challenges to travel outside the main cities for work as a result of several factors including limited public transportation options and limited time availability as women are overrepresented in their time use for care responsibilities (including children, the elderly). Nonetheless, the internship program attracted women in relatively high numbers. This suggests that the internship program is an effective way to crowd women into the transport sector. With more women exposed to jobs with the railway early in their careers, a virtuous cycle could enable women to successfully transfer from internships to entry-level jobs. In time, women might see these non-traditional industries as attractive places to spend their careers.
💡 Lessons Learned
- Addressing Societal Norms: The project aims to address the underlying beliefs that perpetuate Georgia's deeply entrenched social norms undermining women’s full economic potential by promoting non-traditional career paths for women and raising awareness about inequality towards women’s inclusivity.
- A Holistic Strategy: The project takes a strategic approach to challenge inequalities between men and women in the transport sector, combining policy changes (e.g., establishing a sexual harassment policy), practical measures (e.g., increasing women's employment and safety measures), and capacity building (e.g., training and collaboration with civil society organizations).
- Stakeholder Collaboration: The project emphasizes the importance of partnering with women's organizations for awareness-raising, the value of their expertise, and their networks.
- Monitoring and Evaluation: Focus on monitoring and evaluation is crucial for tracking progress, identifying challenges, and making necessary adjustments to improve outcomes.
📌 Conclusion
The Georgian Railway Green Bond Project committed to integrating women into large-scale infrastructure investment. The project contributes towards increasing women’s participation in a historically male-dominated transport sector in Georgia by creating equal opportunities for women, despite pervasive societal norms that discourage women to pursue careers that required technical and engineering abilities.
Practical steps, like a sexual harassment policy, awareness-raising, and rigorous monitoring have created enabling conditions for more women to enter the railway sector including as interns. The Green Bond project sets a good precedent for future transport sector initiatives. The positive outcomes of the project will contribute to more inclusive and equitable transport in Georgia, yielding lasting benefits for women employees as well as women riders. If further efforts aimed at including women in highly skilled and decision-powered functions are set in motion, it could ultimately contribute to women’s quality economic inclusion and the country's broader development, one that fully acknowledges women’s potential.
Note: Claire Charamnac, Harumi Toyama, Tamar Bortsvadze, and Gisela Garzon De La Roza from the Asian Development Bank provided this case study.
1 Georgian Railway Green Bond Project. Gender Action Plan. Asian Development Bank. https://www.adb.org/sites/default/files/
project-documents/55132/55132-001-gap-en.pdf. Data from 2020.