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Freight and logistics are central to everyday life. These sectors depend on a variety of workers, and the types of work have changed rapidly with shifts towards e-commerce and changes to urban logistics. Yet a particular form of masculinity dominates imaginaries of the sector, especially freight transport. Such imaginaries rest on ideas of freight drivers requiring (physical) strength, toughness, flexibility, mobility and driving competencies, as well as being unencumbered by caring responsibilities. In the UK, and elsewhere, the freight sector, and particularly driving-related freight jobs, are heavily reliant on male workers. The freight driver shortage crisis in the UK has been referred to as a ‘ticking timebomb’, emerging from a reliance on white male workers, the majority of whom are over the age of 50. A ‘diversifying’ agenda has been the primary response to this crisis, which has largely focussed on increasing the number of female drivers. At the same time, however, little has been done to address issues associated with pay and conditions for freight workers. In this chapter, the authors examine gendered freight work across three themes: changing mobilities of work, ‘flexibilisation’ of freight working practice and automation of freight vehicles.

Automated vehicle technologies dominate many visions of future systems of smart mobility. This chapter uses the approach of Transition Management to explore the multi-actor governance processes around automated vehicle technologies in the United Kingdom (UK), with specific attention being paid to the role of the UK government. It shows the relatively comprehensive approach to automated vehicle innovation that has been adopted by the UK government, emerging across multiple domains including the creation of positive discourses around automation, and the facilitation of network building and demonstration projects. Framed by the Transition Management cycle of strategic, tactical, operational and reflexive activities, the chapter argues for greater integration across the levels of the cycle, and experimentation that moves beyond technological capability, to include the heterogeneous publics, in a more diverse set of roles than the current framing of ‘potential technology adopter’. The chapter points to the techno-optimism displayed by governments participating in the international race to vehicle automation, often with dual roles as both producers and consumers, and suggest that greater inclusivity, democracy, diversity and openness in the innovation process may contribute to context sensitive implementation.

This chapter introduces the scope and contents of Women, Work and Transport. The situation concerning the extent of women’s participation in the transport workforce worldwide is detailed and the challenges facing women transport workers in different world regions and transport modes is highlighted. The chapter describes the structure, contents and key contributions of each of the 21 chapters that are presented in this volume and signposts readers to key material. Although the chapter necessarily highlights some of the many challenges women face when working in highly masculine cultures, this wide-ranging international collection of evidence of the experiences of women transport professionals in both the Global North and Global South also provides numerous suggestions for how employers, governments and trade unions can address, and ultimately overcome, gender segregation in transport. The chapters acknowledge the dramatic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the transport sector, while also pointing to some of the opportunities provided by new greener forms of transport and automation, as well as noting the risks for women workers.

Despite the massive social benefits that the car has brought, it has become evident that the current mobility system is undermining the benefits it creates with substantial air quality problems, inactive lifestyles, deaths and injuries from accidents and major contributions to the global climate change challenge. The introduction of smart mobility innovations, in promising to challenge the existing regime of automobility may be a major policy opportunity, and also provide a source of new economic opportunity. However, it is far from clear that these opportunities will be recognized or, even where they are, realized due to the complexities of steering any transition in the mobility system.

This book sets out how we should understand the challenge of governing the smart mobility transition and, in this introductory chapter we set out the key arguments and contributions of each part of the book for addressing these challenges. The first section of the book focuses on how the role of the government is challenged by the growing network of actors and the new resource interdependencies that emerge from smart mobility. How these challenges come to be recognized and resolved is itself a critical part of the governance process as explored in the second section. The third section examines the changing context of governance and the capacity of the state to act to steer the transition. This allows us to identify, in our final concluding section, a set of critical topics for those researching and implementing the smart mobility revolution.

A disproportionate fear of vomiting, or emetophobia, is a chronic and disabling condition which is characterized by a tendency to avoid a wide array of situations or activities that might increase the risk of vomiting. Unlike many other subtypes of specific phobia, emetophobia is fairly difficult to treat. In fact, there are only a few published cases in the literature. This paper presents a case of a 46-year old woman with emetophobia in which a trauma-focused treatment approach was applied; that is, an approach particularly aimed at processing disturbing memories of a series of events which were considered to be causal in the etiology of her condition. Four therapy sessions of Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) produced a lasting decrease in symptomatology. A 3-year follow up showed no indication of relapse.

Feminist leadership and administrative praxis include areas overlooked or devalued by traditional leadership. In this chapter, the authors explore how academic administrators in the United States who self-identify as “feminist” integrate their feminist values into daily praxis, decisions, and implementation – or revision – of institutional policies. The goals of this study are to identify how feminist values inform praxis and how feminist administrators’ praxis produce successful changes. Through in-depth, semi-structured, qualitative interviews with feminist administrators in higher education, the authors find commonalities in feminist values, in how those values shape administrators’ interactions, and how they inform initiatives and policies on which administrators have worked. Feminist administrators rely on values such as transparency, collaboration, inclusivity, empowering others, and being mindful of power and personal biases. These values informed their interactions with faculty, staff, and students as well as formal policies and initiatives, which were infused with feminist principles in their efforts to make academe more just.

This paper reports on the initial results of a case study on management-level turnover in the hospitality industry and on factors influencing the career decisions of highly educated employees to stay or leave the industry. This issue is considered using an interpretative paradigm and the conclusion drawn is that retaining these employees cannot be ensured by HRM policy alone. Both personal and general career factors are important, strongly influenced by social aspects. Furthermore, perceptions (deserved or undeserved) of the actual job, as well as characteristics of the industry, are important when deciding to pursue a career either within or outside the hospitality industry.