On Wednesday, Queen Máxima of the Netherlands visited Transports and Logistics, a firm of heavy vehicles transportations in Nieuwegein.
Her Majesty also met with a representation of people undergoing training to be truck drivers. Those people include several women, a novelty compared to the past, during which “truck driver” was considered an exclusively male profession.
During this meeting, she was told of the unprecedented shortage of drivers, partly due to the fall in demands over the last 15 months and partly due to the prejudices that still plague this job, specifically for women (the impossibility of being home for a long period of time being one of them).
She was then given demonstrations of several vehicles, including a semi-articulated truck and a forklift.
After this short lesson, Queen Máxima took off her high heel shoes and tried her hand at driving a truck…barefoot!
It has to be said that, as all women know, driving in heels is uncomfortable, and, depending on the height of the heel, can also be extremely dangerous, so her choice to drive in a safe and contained environment with no shoes on seems to have been dictated by safety concerns.
The theme of the visit was centred around the opportunity for more women to get into this profession, so for the Queen to actually try her hand at this job must have really inspired all the women present, both those who already have experience driving trucks and those younger women who are still training for the profession.
Queen Máxima has always been heavily involved in promoting the growth and establishing of a place for women in society. In particular, she has endorsed many microcredit projects which benefit women, both through her charities and through her work with the microcredit sector in the context of important international organisations, such as the United Nations.
