Women In Trucking's new workforce index points in two directions at once. Among organizations that responded to the 2026-27 survey, women held about 31% of C-suite or executive positions and 37.5% of supervisory leadership roles, up from 28% and 34.5% in the prior index. Board representation was 29%, compared with 29.5% previously.
The reported driver shares did not show the same lift. Respondents with fewer than 500 employees said women were 10% of their professional CDL driver population, down from 12.5% in the 2024-25 index. Organizations with 500 to 4,999 employees reported 10.5%, unchanged, while those with at least 5,000 employees reported 7%, also unchanged.
Functional roles were uneven as well. The new index reports women at 76.5% in human resources and talent management, 45.5% in dispatcher roles and 44% in safety. Diesel technicians were at 2.5%. Putting those figures on one chart may be useful for an internal benchmark, but it does not mean the occupations have the same labor pool, qualification path, working conditions or retention problem.
Methodology sets an important boundary. Women In Trucking says approximately 210 organizations answered its online survey from November 2025 through April 2026. Fifty-one percent of respondents were for-hire carriers or organizations with private fleets, and another 16% were intermediaries such as 3PLs, brokers and intermodal marketing companies.
The association required respondents to be authorized to report company data, but it does not describe the group as a random sample of every U.S. trucking employer. Its index page also says participation was required for companies seeking a related Top Companies for Women nomination. FreightNews therefore infers that the percentages describe the responding organizations and should not be projected as exact national workforce shares.
A fleet can still use the report as a question set. Compare representation by role, company size, recruiting source, applicant flow, qualification completion, first assignment, schedule type, pay method, equipment access, promotion and retention. Then look for the point where women leave the process instead of assigning one broad explanation to every gap.
The driver result deserves particular care. A flat or lower share does not identify whether the cause is applicant volume, licensing, job design, safety experience, home-time expectations, compensation, freight conditions, turnover or sample composition. A carrier needs its own evidence before changing recruiting spend or claiming that a national trend explains a local result.
Use the leadership gains and technician gap as prompts, not verdicts. The index provides a fresh cross-section of companies willing to report; an operating response should come from the fleet's own role-level funnel, promotion and retention data, paired with interviews and workplace fixes that employees can verify.