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美国国家公共电台 NPR--Women represent 7% of long-haul truckers. What's life like for them on the road?

时间:2023-08-02 15:58:24

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(单词翻译)

Women represent 7% of long-haul truckers. What's life like for them on the road?

Transcript1

Early on in the Biden administration, officials released an action plan to strengthen America's trucking workforce2. One idea: recruit more women. Is the trucking industry welcoming them?

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

During his first year in the White House, the Biden administration released an action plan to strengthen America's trucking workforce. It was meant to address supply chain disruptions, and one idea was to recruit more women to drive. Right now they represent less than 7% of truck drivers.

BRANDIE DIAMOND: Hello to everybody out there.

JESS GRAHAM: Started my day at 3 a.m.

MICHELLE: I delivered in California, in the Redlands area.

GRAHAM: Mobile, Ala.

MICHELLE: Seven hundred twenty-six miles today.

DIAMOND: It's time to get rolling.

INSKEEP: Some of the women who do drive - as part of their series on work cultures around the world, NPR's podcast Rough Translation talked with women drivers about what it's like to feel alone on the road and the power of something called windshield time. Here's ROUGH TRANSLATION host Gregory Warner.

GREGORY WARNER, BYLINE3: In the fall of 2010, Jess Graham upended her life. She left an abusive partner, took her 10-year-old daughter and hit the road in the new tractor trailer that she'd just been licensed4 to drive.

GRAHAM: I'm going to go somewhere else. And I'm going to reinvent myself. And I'm going to start over. And I'm going to make my life what I'm going to make it.

WARNER: In my mind - maybe it's a movie version, but you're pulling up in your truck. You're jumping out, and you're literally5 just bundling her up with some clothes and piling her in the truck. It probably wasn't like that, but...

GRAHAM: No, that was exactly what it was. I came in, packed her up and went to the school and told her that she is no longer enrolled6 and that she will be homeschooling. And we hit the road.

WARNER: The living space was 8 feet by 8 feet - two bunk7 beds.

GRAHAM: I have a picture. And she's got all of her stuff in her little cubbies and sitting on her bed smiling.

WARNER: She got her rollerblades and her Nintendo DS and a big backpack stuffed with schoolbooks.

GRAHAM: It's similar to running away and joining the circus. It's about as close as I could come to that, kind of breaking free from a situation that was not healthy mentally and stretching my legs and seeing what I'm made of.

WARNER: Jess and her daughter, Halima, lived in the truck. Jess also home-schooled her.

GRAHAM: You know, we've had dry erase8 markers, where she's just writing down the side of the window a math problem that she's struggling with. And so we're walking through it together.

WARNER: Wait. Wait. She's writing the math problem on the windshield? Like...

GRAHAM: She would lean forward in her seat and write on the windshield the math problem. And we could walk through it together as I'm driving down the road.

WARNER: About 90% of truckers identify as male. But Jess did not find it unwelcoming to be a single mom on the road. In fact, she sometimes felt like the industry had a big girls allowed sign hanging over its door, like when she and her daughter, Halima, would struggle into the driver's lounge at a truck stop.

GRAHAM: The guys would always hand over the remote and...

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THE BEST OF BOTH WORLDS")

MILEY CYRUS: (Singing) You get the best of both worlds.

GRAHAM: So then there's Halima watching "Hannah Montana" with, like, four drivers, and they're just all just asking her questions.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THE BEST OF BOTH WORLDS")

CYRUS: (Singing) 'Cause you know you've got the best of both worlds.

WARNER: Less than a year after they first pulled away from her ex's house, Jess was able to put all the money she'd saved trucking into a house. And she got a nanny, a friend of theirs.

GRAHAM: You know, made sure that she did her schoolwork and did her chores. And, you know, I worked and paid all the bills.

WARNER: And Jess went back on the road without her daughter. And immediately, she noticed a change in the treatment that she got from some of the other drivers now that she did not have a 10-year-old in tow.

GRAHAM: You tend to get a single woman out here, and you're like, why are you out here? Well, you should be home with your kids. You get that attitude from a lot of men out here. Having Halima with me softened9 the blow. When they saw Halima, they realized why I was out here and what I was doing. And it reminded them of their own family, so it almost made it easier.

WARNER: Halima's presence also shielded her in a different way. If her daughter had not been on the road with her and the company not made adjustments for that, then Jess might have been assigned a co-driver or trainee10 driver that first year.

GRAHAM: A lot of these companies - after you finish your training or even as part of your training, you have to run team freight, you know, with some stranger in an 8-by-8 box. It's hard.

WARNER: Almost always, that stranger's a man - sleeping in the other bunk bed. And Jess also found that without her daughter with her, she did not have much reason to linger in drivers lounges. She didn't feel comfortable hanging out in the parking lot if she wasn't there to watch Halima rollerblade while the sun went down. And Jess says that, gradually - and like a lot of women in trucking - her strategy to get through the days was just to keep her head down and keep moving.

GRAHAM: When you see another woman out here - we tend to stick to ourselves and keep our heads down and just self-isolate. And it's easier to just keep our head down than it is to interact or make waves, you know, just quietly go about our day.

WARNER: Jess spent years self-isolating like this. She became withdrawn11 and solitary12.

GRAHAM: Like, I - honestly, I have a hard time functioning when I'm not in my truck. I don't know how to grocery shop anymore. I can't handle that experience anymore because I've kind of lost all of those normal daily routines that most people do.

WARNER: But those long stretches of solitude13 also led the way to Jess' own transformation14. Truckers have a phrase for this - windshield time.

GRAHAM: The same way my daughter used the windshield to solve her problems in the math world - I'm not using a dry erase marker on the windshield, but I am using the windshield. I'm counting the miles. I'm counting the cars.

WARNER: Drivers say that windshield time is more than just time spent driving. It can be a period of self-reflection and inner change.

GRAHAM: So it gives you that time to decide, are you going to continue on this path, or are you going to pick a new path? Every mile out there is different from your last mile. So every time you see a new mile, that's a new opportunity.

WARNER: And for Jess, that new opportunity was in advocacy.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

GRAHAM: Hey, everyone. It's Jess from the board of directors of Real Women In Trucking. And we are here at the Mid-America Truck Show, Louisville, Ky.

WARNER: In 2021, after more than a decade on the road, Jess became a board member of Real Women In Trucking. It's a group advocating for training and legislation to prevent violence against women in trucking schools and on the road.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

GRAHAM: We've signed up some new members. Come out...

WARNER: Jess still has her bad days, days of unbearable15 loneliness. But it's different now. In the beginning, she says she chose trucking to get away from her ex. But now her daughter is in college. And this job - it's become a part of her in a way that she doesn't want to give up.

GRAHAM: In the beginning, it was about escape. It was about getting on a new path. And now it is about the freedom, getting out there and living my life, where that was for survival, but now it's just for who I am.

INSKEEP: Windshield time - hope somebody's listening is getting that right now. Hear more stories of women truckers and other work lives on the podcast that Gregory Warner hosts, Rough Translation.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "BAD MOTHER TRUCKER")

ERIC CHURCH: (Singing) She drove an '81 Peterbilt 18-wheeler, jet black with pink mud flaps.


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点击收听单词发音收听单词发音  

1 transcript JgpzUp     
n.抄本,誊本,副本,肄业证书
参考例句:
  • A transcript of the tapes was presented as evidence in court.一份录音带的文字本作为证据被呈交法庭。
  • They wouldn't let me have a transcript of the interview.他们拒绝给我一份采访的文字整理稿。
2 workforce workforce     
n.劳动大军,劳动力
参考例句:
  • A large part of the workforce is employed in agriculture.劳动人口中一大部分受雇于农业。
  • A quarter of the local workforce is unemployed.本地劳动力中有四分之一失业。
3 byline sSXyQ     
n.署名;v.署名
参考例句:
  • His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
  • We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。
4 licensed ipMzNI     
adj.得到许可的v.许可,颁发执照(license的过去式和过去分词)
参考例句:
  • The new drug has not yet been licensed in the US. 这种新药尚未在美国获得许可。
  • Is that gun licensed? 那支枪有持枪执照吗?
5 literally 28Wzv     
adv.照字面意义,逐字地;确实
参考例句:
  • He translated the passage literally.他逐字逐句地翻译这段文字。
  • Sometimes she would not sit down till she was literally faint.有时候,她不走到真正要昏厥了,决不肯坐下来。
6 enrolled ff7af27948b380bff5d583359796d3c8     
adj.入学登记了的v.[亦作enrol]( enroll的过去式和过去分词 );登记,招收,使入伍(或入会、入学等),参加,成为成员;记入名册;卷起,包起
参考例句:
  • They have been studying hard from the moment they enrolled. 从入学时起,他们就一直努力学习。 来自《简明英汉词典》
  • He enrolled with an employment agency for a teaching position. 他在职业介绍所登了记以谋求一个教师的职位。 来自《简明英汉词典》
7 bunk zWyzS     
n.(车、船等倚壁而设的)铺位;废话
参考例句:
  • He left his bunk and went up on deck again.他离开自己的铺位再次走到甲板上。
  • Most economists think his theories are sheer bunk.大多数经济学家认为他的理论纯属胡说。
8 erase woMxN     
v.擦掉;消除某事物的痕迹
参考例句:
  • He tried to erase the idea from his mind.他试图从头脑中抹掉这个想法。
  • Please erase my name from the list.请把我的名字从名单上擦去。
9 softened 19151c4e3297eb1618bed6a05d92b4fe     
(使)变软( soften的过去式和过去分词 ); 缓解打击; 缓和; 安慰
参考例句:
  • His smile softened slightly. 他的微笑稍柔和了些。
  • The ice cream softened and began to melt. 冰淇淋开始变软并开始融化。
10 trainee 9ntwA     
n.受训练者
参考例句:
  • The trainee checked out all right on his first flight.受训者第一次飞行完全合格。
  • Few of the trainee footballers make it to the top.足球受训人员中没有几个能达到顶级水平。
11 withdrawn eeczDJ     
vt.收回;使退出;vi.撤退,退出
参考例句:
  • Our force has been withdrawn from the danger area.我们的军队已从危险地区撤出。
  • All foreign troops should be withdrawn to their own countries.一切外国军队都应撤回本国去。
12 solitary 7FUyx     
adj.孤独的,独立的,荒凉的;n.隐士
参考例句:
  • I am rather fond of a solitary stroll in the country.我颇喜欢在乡间独自徜徉。
  • The castle rises in solitary splendour on the fringe of the desert.这座城堡巍然耸立在沙漠的边际,显得十分壮美。
13 solitude xF9yw     
n. 孤独; 独居,荒僻之地,幽静的地方
参考例句:
  • People need a chance to reflect on spiritual matters in solitude. 人们需要独处的机会来反思精神上的事情。
  • They searched for a place where they could live in solitude. 他们寻找一个可以过隐居生活的地方。
14 transformation SnFwO     
n.变化;改造;转变
参考例句:
  • Going to college brought about a dramatic transformation in her outlook.上大学使她的观念发生了巨大的变化。
  • He was struggling to make the transformation from single man to responsible husband.他正在努力使自己由单身汉变为可靠的丈夫。
15 unbearable alCwB     
adj.不能容忍的;忍受不住的
参考例句:
  • It is unbearable to be always on thorns.老是处于焦虑不安的情况中是受不了的。
  • The more he thought of it the more unbearable it became.他越想越觉得无法忍受。

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