Women need a collective voice, especially in the supply chain, logistics, and transport sectors, maintains Margaret Bango.

Women in Logistics and Transport (WiLAT) was founded in 2010 to encourage, empower, and support professional women in the logistics and transport industries.

WiLAT SA, meanwhile, was formed in 2013, with the intention to become a catalyst for local female empowerment in the sector. We understood that we needed to introduce women to the industry and encourage, motivate, and support their growth. Ultimately, we believe this will create the leading professionals that the country so desperately needs.

While empowering women has always been close to my heart, it was while listening to Aisha Ali-Ibrahim, global convener of WiLAT and chairperson of WiLAT Nigeria, speak during the Women Advancement Conference in 2013 that inspired me to create something similar in our country. My only condition was that the group would not be aligned to any minister or government department, in the interest of autonomy, which would allow us to create a proper vehicle to empower women.

Rough diamonds
It was obvious that women needed to be trained and acquire practical working experience before they could be incorporated into the industry. That’s where we come in. We provide information and skills facilitation on a pro bono basis. We want women to know that they can be owners of companies in the sector and we make them aware of the opportunities that exist.

Membership affiliation facilitates membership benefits, which are used to either organise or attend local and international conferences.

A lot of the women we help have experience in running a business and they understand that doing so is a challenge. Many of them are in a growth trap – getting by, but not excelling. We tell them they can do better, provided they’re properly informed and are in a position to make better decisions. We provide information and encourage them to diversify.

Having signed a memorandum of collaboration with the women chamber of the National African Federated Chamber of Commerce and Industry, we are able to reach women nationally. It’s important that we have coordinators in each and every province.

While the country has a very good Sector Education Training Authority, we believe we need a complementary programme – one that encourages entrepreneurship. We’ve got to come up with a system that complements what the government is doing.

We cannot say, with certainty, that we will create a job or a position for women that are part of our group. Opportunities in the industry are hard to come by and we really need the heavyweights in the industry to take a stand, mentor women, and create opportunities for them. We need our graduates to be incubated – possibly by receiving small contracts or subcontracts – to get practical work experience. Most companies we’ve approached are concerned with the amount of work experience these women have.

Walk the talk
WiLAT SA is in talks with the Transport Education Training Authority and the Institute of Logistics and Supply Chain Management. Together, we’re developing a programme for newcomers to the industry, which provides a broad perspective, so that participants can decide in what area they’d like to specialise. Once their training is completed, proper enterprise development can start and they’ll be able to decide what mode of transport to pursue.

We are trying to harness people’s passion into viable businesses. Simultaneously, we’re trying to remove the assumption, by women, that this is an industry only for men. It’s an understandable assumption if you consider that only 1 out of every 100 companies in this field is run by women. That statistic will change. A lot of men in the transport industry started out as truck owner/drivers. Power-assisted steering and automatic transmissions are making truck driving more appealing to women.

We tell women who are worried about the gender bias not to focus on the established industries, but rather to look at the upcoming ones. We encourage them to educate themselves by researching, reading, and attending events and conferences where possible.