Unhappy Trails Chapter Summary

In the reading “Unhappy Trails: Female Truckers Say They Faced Rape and Abuse in Troubled Training Program” by Merlan, Anna the author explained how Tracy left her job from an office working position to being a truck driver because she wanted a change. However, she went to truck driving school in Iowa where she got her commercial driving license but then had to go to Oklahoma City where she had to go with an instructor and drive a certain amount of days and miles before she was able to drive solo. Her trainer started playing with her in ways that made her feel uncomfortable she was being sexually harassed. Her trainer would make up stories saying that only one bunk bed in the truck was functioning correctly which meant they would have to be …show more content…
Later on, this started to get more brutal Tracy was slapped in many areas of her body by the trainer to the point where hand marks were left on her she was just glad she wasn’t raped. Moreover, other women weren’t as lucky as her while going to training Cathy, Claudia, and Leslie were sexually harassed, assaulted and even raped while training with the company they were threatened that if they didn’t do the sexual favors asked they would be thrown out the truck. They accused the trainers but there wasn’t enough proof to prove they did what they were being accused of. The lawsuit claimed that the drivers accused of harassment shouldn’t be fired instead to not have female trainees in their truck. Many women that went for training started taking weapons such as knives, screwdrivers, tasers etc. to put under their pillows at night and that way they could defend themselves from rape. Tracy was one of the females that stayed working three years for the company because she was in need of the …show more content…
I agree that being a truck driver is a common male job which can be problematic when it comes to training because males sometimes like to take advantage of having a female in the truck. CRST has had many lawsuits over the years which is ridiculously crazy because they still keep hiring people that are harassing those that need to do the training before they can drive the truck solo and start working. However, they should have female trainers for the women that need the training and that way there would be less sexual harassment incidents. I find problematic how they didn’t really believe the words of women which I see as discrimination because they suffered through so much harassment they didn’t deserve. It disappoints me because women are just trying to have a better job to sustain their families and they can’t even do that without being harassed. This text disappoints me due to the fact that women sometimes go through so much while trying to get a better job to have a better living. Not only that but as well as the authorities since they don’t do anything about it because they tend to believe what the abuser says instead of the victim. This relates to most of the material and reading we have read in class so far because this clearly