🧩 The Challenge
Transport and infrastructure sectors remain among the most male-dominated fields globally, and Türkiye is no exception. Engineering, logistics, and railway operations have long been perceived as unsuitable for women—a perception reinforced by years of under-representation and limited pathways for young women to gain exposure to the sector early in their careers.
The General Directorate of Infrastructure Investments (AYGM), part of Türkiye's Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure, manages large-scale public infrastructure projects including the World Bank-supported Railway Logistics Improvement Project (RLIP). While AYGM plays a central role in building the country's transport backbone, attracting and retaining women in technical, planning, and operational roles remained a persistent challenge. Without deliberate intervention, the next generation of female engineers, urban planners, and logistics professionals risked missing out on formative public-sector experience entirely.
🛠️ The Intervention
Embedded within the RLIP, AYGM launched a structured internship program targeting female students in their final years of undergraduate study across STEM-related disciplines—civil engineering, architecture, urban and regional planning, environmental sciences, and international logistics. The program ran continuously from 2020 to 2025.
Interns were placed in project units aligned with their academic backgrounds and assigned supervisors who provided structured guidance, technical mentorship, and regular feedback. Each intern engaged with real project activities rather than purely administrative tasks, enabling them to gain hands-on experience with the planning, evaluation, and implementation phases of public infrastructure projects.
The program also incorporated an inclusive selection and application process. From 2023 onwards, AYGM adopted the national Career Gate digital platform, which allowed students to create profiles, submit academic records, and indicate their preferred departments. Shortlisted candidates received formal internship offers through the system, ensuring transparency and equal access. Interns received a stipend set at one-third of the national minimum wage, along with work accident and occupational disease insurance, reducing financial barriers to participation. Upon completion, performance evaluations were delivered to students for submission to their universities.
🏗️ Implementation Challenges and Successes
The program did not unfold without obstacles. The COVID-19 pandemic significantly disrupted both the 2020 and 2021 cohorts, causing gaps in standard documentation practices and requiring exceptional planning arrangements. Record-keeping limitations from those years meant that follow-up studies could not be conducted for early cohorts—a data gap that underscored the need for more resilient monitoring systems from the outset.
Nevertheless, the program demonstrated remarkable momentum. As internship systems became more established after the pandemic and the national Career Gate platform was adopted, both the scale and quality of the program improved substantially. Supervisory models were adapted to institutional constraints: rather than assigning a dedicated mentor to each intern individually, AYGM implemented group supervision, with one supervisor guiding small clusters of students—a practical solution that preserved meaningful guidance without overwhelming staff capacity.
📊 Results
The program significantly exceeded its original targets. The initial goal was to host 20 female interns over the five-year project period. By 2025, AYGM had hosted 250 female interns—12.5 times the original target.
Follow-up phone interviews conducted in October 2025 with interns from the 2022, 2023, and 2024 cohorts provided insight into the program's longer-term impact on professional development and labor market integration:
- 2022 cohort: Of 20 respondents, 80% were employed, with 62.5% having secured positions within 6–12 months of completing their internships. Roles spanned logistics, engineering, architecture, and city planning.
- 2023 cohort: Of 20 respondents, 50% were employed. The majority worked in the private sector, with roles including architecture, procurement engineering, geotechnics, and city planning.
- 2024 cohort: Most respondents were still completing their degrees, but 27.8% of those reached had already entered the workforce in roles including civil engineering, sustainability advisory, and city planning.
Across all cohorts, interns consistently reported that their AYGM experience offered an indirect—but meaningful—connection to their professional roles, suggesting the program built transferable skills and institutional awareness that extended well beyond technical knowledge.
💡 Lessons Learned
The program surfaced the following lessons:
- Structured placement matters: Directing interns to units aligned with their academic backgrounds—and ensuring active supervision—significantly enhanced the quality of the experience. Internship programs should be treated as complementary tools supporting project goals, not administrative add-ons.
- Early inclusion accelerates change: In sectors like railway infrastructure and logistics, where women are significantly underrepresented, early and meaningful exposure—particularly through internship programs—can shift perceptions and career trajectories. Female interns who gain visibility in these environments are better positioned to envision long-term careers in the sector.
- Centralized, transparent systems widen the pipeline: The transition to the national Career Gate platform diversified the intern pool by drawing students from a broader range of universities. Centralized application processes increase trust, reduce bias, and strengthen institutional accountability.
- Data collection must be built in from the start: The pandemic-related record gaps from 2020–2021 highlighted the risks of ad hoc documentation. Monitoring and feedback mechanisms need to be designed alongside program implementation—not as afterthoughts.
- Follow-up studies are worth the investment: Even limited-scope follow-up interviews yielded valuable insights about employment rates, career trajectories, and the alignment between internship experiences and professional development. These data points support evidence-based program improvement and help make the case for inclusive internship models.
📌 Conclusion
The RLIP internship program demonstrates what is possible when gender inclusion is treated as a core project objective rather than a peripheral add-on. By providing 250 female students with meaningful, supervised experience in public-sector railway infrastructure—far exceeding the original target of 20—AYGM created a replicable model for bringing women into one of Türkiye's most male-dominated sectors.
The program's impact extends beyond the individual interns. It signals to universities, employers, and female students alike that women belong in transport infrastructure. With each cohort, the pool of women who can reference credible public-sector experience on their CVs grows—building the foundation for a more diverse and skilled workforce in Türkiye's railway and logistics sectors for years to come.