The Moving Women Forward Speaking Tour was started by PennDOT secretary Leslie Richards and First Lady Frances Wolf in 2017 because they want to encourage more diversity and representation in the transportation field.
The tour has a new panel. Although women make up about half of the workforce in the United States only 24 percent of women are in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math).
Transportation and civil engineering have been and are still a very male-centric field and in order to get more women in the fold they have to study those STEM careers.
The townhall style event centered mainly around the importance of diversity not only in the workforce itself, but in leadership positions itself in order to give young women role models to look up to along their career path. Although women make up 50 percent of the public sector jobs only 20 percent are in those leadership positions.
It also touched on what the department is doing in order to recruit a more diverse workforce and the role women and men play in supporting and encouraging a diverse body of workers.
