Driving Change for Women in Trucking

“That’s what fueled me to start REAL Women in Trucking,” she said.

Founded in 2010 as a protest group, the organization grew from Wood’s belief that few groups were addressing what she called “meaningful issues for women truck drivers.”

Honoring the Women who Came Before

Along the way, Wood met women whose stories rarely make headlines. Some of RWIT’s founding members began driving in the 1960s and are still behind the wheel today, now in their 70s. 

“One of our founding members, Idella Hansen, still drives today with her grandson as a team,” Wood said.

Many of the older women Wood encountered entered trucking alongside their husbands but carved out careers of their own. Their persistence and dedication helped inspire her advocacy and reinforced the importance of ensuring future generations of women drivers have access to opportunity and fair treatment.

Today, Wood says many truck drivers still “live hand to mouth, load to load,” often without pensions or other protections. When women are denied opportunities, the consequences can be significant.

“They’re so used to being mistreated and abused and never winning and not being heard that they just accept discrimination,” she said.

Yet truck drivers, she noted, keep the country moving while spending weeks away from family and home.

“They should have rights and they should have people to help fight for their rights,” she said.

A Victory Beyond the Courtroom

Wood brought that same determination to concerns about discriminatory employment advertising on Meta platforms. Working with attorneys, including AARP Foundation’s litigation team, she helped challenge practices that could prevent some workers from seeing job opportunities via online advertising. 

Rather than ending with a courtroom judgment, the effort led to changes by Meta. According to attorneys involved in the matter, the company voluntarily expanded a system intended to reduce gender and age disparities in how employment ads are delivered to Facebook users. In simple terms, the technology is designed to help ensure that job ads are shown to a wider and more balanced mix of people instead of disproportionately reaching one demographic group. REAL Women in Trucking’s attorneys said the change addressed the core concern at the heart of the case — that women and older people receive their fair share of job ads as other people.

For AARP Foundation attorneys, the result underscores an important principle: Systems change can happen in different ways. “Success is not always measured by what happens in a courtroom,” said Louis Lopez, senior vice president for litigation at AARP Foundation. “Sometimes the most meaningful outcome is seeing policies change before a lawsuit proceeds further.”

“It was an honor to fight for REAL Women in Trucking and its members in this case,” said Peter Romer-Friedman, the managing partner of Peter Romer-Friedman Law PLLC, a civil rights law firm based in D.C. and New York. “Job opportunities are now mostly found in digital spaces, and we are glad that our advocacy raised a bright spotlight on a digital problem that was causing real-life harm to women workers and older workers.”

Wood knows there is still work ahead, but she remains committed to the cause she embraced and the movement she founded more than a decade ago.

“I’ve just not been able to walk away from it,” she said, describing her advocacy as “a labor of love.”

Learn how AARP Foundation attorneys are fighting for the rights of older adults and giving older people a voice in the nation’s courts. 

Read the latest news on how AARP Foundation's legal advocacy work is defending the rights of older adults.