Media centre

Tuesday 8 Mar 2022

International Women’s Day: A journey by rail

Region & Route:

Eastern: Anglia

On International Women’s Day (Tuesday 8 March), three women describe their journeys to a career in the rail industry in Anglia with Network Rail, in what’s traditionally been a male dominated industry.

Lisa Varney, route asset and systems integration manager has worked in the industry for 21 years – not bad for someone who initially joined as a data entry temp, for Balfour Beatty in Romford, as a stop gap after completing her degree and working in IT finance.

Lisa, said: “I only worked three days a week, but the atmosphere and flexibility after working in the West End just caught me. I completed my tasks and offered support to my finance and commercial colleagues and after a short period, I asked the finance director for a role within the finance department.”

Lisa has supported both operations and maintenance whilst in finance and has worked with all three delivery units where rail works are coordinated.

One of the things Lisa is very grateful to the rail industry for is the flexibility it offers. Lisa explains, “The rail industry allowed me to work flexibly around my two sons. I’ve had various flexible working patterns for the last 17 years including reduced hours, compressed weeks and the ability to work from home. My sons are now at an age where they need less support and I wanted to progress my career.

“My current role is perfect for me, anyone who knows me, will know I like to be involved and this role has links to all aspects of the engineering team, including asset condition data quality, funding decisions, CP7 work bank co-ordination, interface between deliverers, maintenance and the team, maintenance target setting and one of my favourites, being a line manger to the engineering graduates. It’s a great role and one that I’m able to continue learning about the business in.”

Lisa’s one piece of advice for someone thinking of joining Network Rail is, “Go for it! It’s a great place to work with lots of opportunities to progress and if you chose to have children, the flexible working available is well established.”

Fatima Noor is a project manager for integrated planning, and her role mainly focuses on the integration of asset renewals projects, including enhancements.

Fatima says, “As a black woman with a distinctive ethnic name, I’m cognisant of the fact that my CV would get overlooked based on just my name in any industry within the UK. Being a woman and black in the railway was tough when I started out in 2005. Behaviour towards women in the workplace was atrocious (particularly in front line/operations from my experience). Improvement in this area within the railway is evident today. I had to prove myself to hiring managers to get ahead, more than just a glossy CV and experience. I put myself forward for any relevant secondments, networked within the industry and volunteered to support employee networks, to broaden my skill set.”

Fatima has this advice for helping to achieve equality; “Get comfortable with being uncomfortable. What I mean by that is ask the uncomfortable question. Apart from changing policies to meet the equality standards expected from a large organisation, it’s the little changes in a person’s behaviour every day that adds up. For example, today, if you come across something that doesn’t feel right to you, question the person or group. Every shift or meeting is an opportunity to support this change within our industry.”

Fatima has this advice for anyone considering a career in the rail industry; “There are many opportunities for women within Network Rail. There are policies in place to support career growth, higher learning opportunities and much more. Also, it’s worth mentioning that whilst working for Network Rail I have come across several supportive men who are dedicated to equality for everyone, and some of these men have been pivotal to my development over the years.”

Emma Askam-Johns, programme manager, is currently working for both the passenger strategy team and the performance team, which means collaboration is a huge part of her role. 

In Emma’s first office role working for a Japanese trading company, she was expected to make the coffee, do the photocopying and it was assumed she would be better at typing than men.

Emma explains, “I changed their expectations by not drinking coffee, refusing the photocopying course and proving myself at the job in hand, so that I was quickly promoted. The hard truth though is that as a young English woman in a Japanese company, the bias at the time was too great to be viewed as an equal, so I accepted the things that I could not change and moved on to other companies where I would be valued for who I am.” 

Emma says, “I’m proud of completely changing my career direction after 20 years in finance, retraining in change programme management and retuning those analytical and management skills into performance improvement and collaboration. 

“Network Rail supported me to adapt my career path without compromising who I am. I believe you can be a strong businesswoman whilst still being loyal and sincere, that you can be assertive without being aggressive and that you can be emotional without being weak. 

“I want to show my sons that we should try and start with a blank canvas when we meet people and build our perceptions based on who they prove to be, not on preconceptions. I tell my sons every day that they can be whoever they want to be and that they should treat others how they want to be treated.”

Anyone interested in a career with Network Rail should visit https://www.networkrail.co.uk/careers/ for more information about the roles available, the skills we are looking for and how to apply.

Notes to editors

About International Women’s Day

International Women's Day is a global day celebrating the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women. The day also marks a call to action for accelerating gender parity. Significant activity is witnessed worldwide as groups come together to celebrate women's achievements or rally for women's equality.

The purpose of the International Women's Day website is to support the supporters, and in doing so it provides a platform to help forge positive change for women. 

Marked annually on March 8th, International Women's Day (IWD) is one of the most important days of the year to:

• celebrate women's achievements
• raise awareness about women's equality
• lobby for accelerated gender parity
• fundraise for female-focused charities

Further information is available at: International Women's Day 2022 (internationalwomensday.com)

About Network Rail

We own, operate and develop Britain's railway infrastructure; that's 20,000 miles of track, 30,000 bridges, tunnels and viaducts and the thousands of signals, level crossings and stations. We run 20 of the UK's largest stations while all the others, over 2,500, are run by the country's train operating companies.

Usually, there are almost five million journeys made in the UK and over 600 freight trains run on the network. People depend on Britain's railway for their daily commute, to visit friends and loved ones and to get them home safe every day. Our role is to deliver a safe and reliable railway, so we carefully manage and deliver thousands of projects every year that form part of the multi-billion pound Railway Upgrade Plan, to grow and expand the nation's railway network to respond to the tremendous growth and demand the railway has experienced - a doubling of passenger journeys over the past 20 years.

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