Women on the railways frequently get a hard time, and rotating shifts in Operations can be difficult, especially for relationships, as you are often rostered to work when family and friends have social events. Whilst swapping shifts is frequently indulged, taking a sickie is sometimes required. And every so often you get a new management type who clamps down on shift swaps and other unofficial flexible arrangements and then wonders why the absenteeism rate climbs.
Unlike other area of the economy where women frequently earn up to 20% less than their male colleagues for doing essentially the same job railway classifications at least means women and men get the same pay rate for the same job. Even so too many Neanderthals do not treat their female colleagues well, and far too many management types go out of their way to give females a hard time and senior managers who legally should know better are complicit in this attitude.
Ergonomic design is a nice idea, and from appearances the Cl 47 style cab layouts seem pretty good compared especially to the older EE nose cab designs, However I an aware from personal experience that getting sensible cab layouts, or other workplace designs is a very uphill battle for Union reps, as you frequently deal with well qualified ( and well meaning ) designers who will tell you in great detail why a design has to be and it is very difficault to convince these people that the way the location is actually worked, and the equipment and paperwork that needs to be utilised means that in practice their ergonomic design in some aspects is counterproductive to their intention. In my experience lighting, dimmers and stationary trays are a never ending scource of argument .
Women's bathrooms and locker rooms are another bugbear as they are frequently overlooked, or given a half hearted space which is totally inadequate and obviously not designed by a woman and all sorts of spurious reasons are trotted out with great vehemence as to why that is all they are going to get. I find this attitude to be totally unacceptable, especially when women have worked on the railway since at least 1850, they definately deserve a lot better.
Rant over, but I thoroughly enjoyed being both a railway worker and a Union rep, and I got to be well paid to play trains, wha more can a rail fan want ?